


Rebel Against Destiny

by eliddell



Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Amnesia, And Gaav still swears like a sailor, Drama, M/M, Multiple first-person POV, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 54
Words: 183,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: Two men, both unaware of the past they share, meet unexpectedly in a small city of no particular distinction.  They join together to look for what they're missing.Finding the answers they want turns out to be very messy indeed.





	1. "Red"

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first 'fic I started writing when Val and Gaav decided they were going to camp out in my head. I put it aside for a while when _The Gates of Time_ ambushed me (if you're really bored, you can try to figure out where I was when I stopped), but eventually made it back to it, although I'm really not sure the ending lives up to the beginning. Oh, well. I'm not going to go back and do anything about it now. ~186 000 words was enough.
> 
> As usual, this follows the anime canon, but draws bits and pieces of background from the novels where the two don't contradict each other. I gave up trying to police Japanese vs. English honourifics about halfway through. And there are at least two spelling mistakes in here somewhere, because I was trigger-happy on the "skip" button and didn't want to re-run the spellchecker when I knew it was going to turn up hundreds of false positives. My own fault for using old software with no proper Canadian English dictionary, I guess.
> 
> I still don't own _The Slayers_. The characters and setting mostly belong to Hajime Kanzaka.

My first thought as I woke up was, _what the fuck?_

Well, no, that isn't true. My _first_ thought didn't have words in it, just emotions: rage, betrayal, pain, and the nagging sensation that I'd left something unfinished. _What the fuck?_ came second. 

I opened my eyes and discovered that there was part of a bush, looking a great deal the worse for wear, a few inches from my nose. I stared at it for a moment, then began the slow work of levering myself up to a sitting position. It hurt like a son of a bitch. My head was pounding like someone had decided to hollow it out with a pickaxe, and my body felt tender, muscles aching whenever they were stretched or twisted. I parted the rags of my clothing and found a mass of scar tissue, fresh and bright red with irritation, running from my left shoulder all the way to my waist, front and back. 

"The fuck . . . ?" I muttered out loud. How the hell had that happened? 

I felt myself breaking out in a cold sweat as I realized I couldn't remember. 

Okay, so how had I ended up here? 

Nothing. 

The last thing I remembered before _what the fuck_? 

Nothing. 

My fucking _name_? 

Still nothing. 

I snarled at the tattered bush. "Amnesia," I said, noting in the process that my voice was deep and gravelly. "Shit." 

The fucking bush wasn't going to tell me anything, so I forced myself to look at my body and my surroundings. 

First thing I noticed was that my clothes were shredded. I was wearing what had been a shirt and trousers in dark fabric, brown boots, and a yellow-orange trenchcoat overtop, but the shirt and coat were in strips, and down below, the fabric around my knees was in tatters. I felt around inside the collars and inside the waistband of my trousers, but there were no nametags. That would have been too easy. 

My hair, which was bright red and long enough that I was sitting on some of it, had a blackened patch in it. I scowled. I was going to have to cut that part away, once I found a pair of scissors. A battered metal ring that would probably knock against the backs of my knees when I stood stopped the blood-coloured mass from getting too unwieldy. 

The rest of me was pretty badly banged around too, scraped and bruised and battered, but there was nothing _seriously_ wrong except for the scars I'd already found and the way my fucking _head_ was pounding like a drum. I checked it carefully for lumps and found nothing, so the pounding had to be due to drugs or spells. A spell made more sense, since it might easily have stolen my memory too, but that theory . . . felt wrong, somehow. 

My surroundings weren't much more helpful. I was in a shallow ravine full of bushes and rocks and useless shit like that. The only manmade item nearby was a sword, a blade maybe five feet long that had partially flattened the bush it was leaning against. I levered myself to my feet and reached out to pick it up. The hilt felt natural in my hand, and I brought it up to rest against my shoulder in a smooth, automatic motion. 

_Mine!_

Well, that settled that. 

I didn't seem to have anything else. A couple of the pockets sewn into my clothes had survived the shredding, but they were empty. 

Well, shit. That was just great. I was some kind of swordsman . . . a soldier, maybe? Or an adventurer? And I was broke, my clothes were likely to fall off me any moment, and I had no idea what my fucking name was, where I was, or who had dumped me here, because I was sure I hadn't picked this place for a vacation spot. I wouldn't have been nearly so bothered by the rest if I'd had some idea who my enemies were. 

I wasn't going to find out by staring at the fucking bushes and talking to myself, either, so I picked a direction and started to climb out of the ravine, discovering along the way that the fucking bushes had thorns. There was no sign of how I'd gotten down here, either, even though I should have left a decent-sized trail of crushed vegetation. Maybe I'd been dropped from directly above. 

From the top of the hill, I could see more ravines, rocks, bushes . . . and a road, or at least a cart track following a ribbon of flat terrain marked off with white stones. Well, it was a place to start, anyway. Finding people meant a chance of finding someone who knew me. Assuming I could even get near them with an oversized sword resting against my shoulder . . . but I wasn't going to leave it and there was no other way to carry it. Whatever swordbelt or harness I'd been using hadn't landed here with me. I was probably lucky to have the sword itself. 

I wasn't sure what direction I was going in until the sun started to go down and I was able to figure out "west". Turned out I was in fact headed west-ish, although without knowing where I was that wasn't exactly useful. 

Supper was a handful of unripe raspberries, so tart I thought my mouth was going to be permanently puckered. I slept under a bush, with the sword beside me and my hand on its hilt, and woke up cold and stiff and cranky and covered with dew. 

I cut the fucking bush down to punish it for not being a proper roof and started walking again, swapping my sword from one shoulder to the other every ten minutes or so. It wasn't that it was heavy so much as there didn't seem to be any position that didn't put it on top of at least one bruise. 

Some time around noon, the "road" dipped down and crossed a stream. I took the opportunity to have a drink. Too bad the water wasn't deep enough for fish—if I didn't find something better than green berries to eat before tonight, I was going to be in pretty rough shape. I'd been travelling for nearly a day without seeing anyone even though the heath I was walking through had no cover high enough to hide a standing human, and I was starting to wonder if the fucking road didn't go from a basilisk's den to a burned-out town, or something like that. 

More walking. The hills started to get higher and rockier as the sun sank lower, and I still hadn't seen any sign of people in the area besides the road itself. 

"—him." 

My head snapped up. Had I really just heard . . . ? 

"—nothing—" 

A few steps closer, and I could hear a bit better. 

"You've got a pack, don't you? And clothes on your back and shoes on your feet. Plus that thing you're wearing on your face!" 

"Boss, are you sure it's worth fighting him for them? I mean . . . a _mage_ and all . . ." The whiny second voice dropped too low for me to hear what it was saying, but I recognized the tone. _Fucking stupid little toad doesn't know how to do anything but complain._

"He's the only person who's come through here alone in nearly a month, you idiot!" the first voice snapped. "That's why we've been eating grass and mushrooms lately! If we don't get something out of this one, we might as well turn ourselves in!" _And this one's all bark and no bite. Biggest fish in a pond the size of a mud puddle._

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you take my Ear." There was something a bit off about the third voice, but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was. 

"Who said we were giving you a choice?" "Boss" asked. 

I snorted. 

" _Servants of the sky and the earth—_ " 

I wasn't sure how I knew that was the beginning of an incantation, but I started to walk faster. If some idiot was going to start throwing magic around, I wanted to be able to see where it was coming from, so that I didn't get frozen or fried or skewered. 

" _Freeze Arrow!_ " came the finishing cry, just as I rounded a corner and found myself at a crossroads marked by a cairn of the same white stones that delineated the road I'd been following. There were eight people there, but I was able to pick out "Boss" right away—he had to be the one with the gold tooth. He and the other guys picking themselves up out of the dust were wearing scruffy clothes and scraps of leather armour and carrying weapons, most of them rusty. If you'd wanted a picture to go with a definition of "bandit gang", these guys could've posed for it. There were dissolving ice spears sticking out of the ground all around them. 

Given that, it didn't take much work to pick out the sorcerer. He was clean, and his green robe was in good repair. It also fit. For some reason, he was wearing an elaborate earring in his left ear, and a monocle attached to it by a dull, silvery chain. It overwhelmed the rest of his face and made him look ridiculous. 

"Who the fuck are you?" "Boss" asked. When I turned to glare at him, he was staring at me. 

"Why would I bother giving my name to some two-bit asshole bandit?" I asked, flexing my shoulder so that my sword bounced against it. 

"I asked you who the fuck you are! Some friend of _his_?" "Boss" waved a hand in the direction of the mage. 

I snorted. "Never seen him before." Or at least, I didn't think I had, but it was hard to tell. "But if you want a name for me, 'Death' would probably work." 

I brought my sword down in a smooth arc. It hit the shoulder of the idiot bandit who had just lunged at me and kept right on going through his torso and the upper part of one thigh. The tip of the blade hit the ground and struck sparks from a rock just as the two largest parts of the bandit fell in opposite directions with a messy _splat_. 

There was a moment of total silence, then a roar as all the other bandits came at me at once. I took a half-step back and swung, cutting through two more bandits and creating a shockwave that sent the remaining three, including "Boss", who seemed to believe in leading from the rear, tumbling ass over teakettle into a nice deep thornbush. I snorted and shook the blood off my sword before pointedly turning my back on that bush, ignoring the moans and curses currently rising from it. 

Really, I was more interested in the dead bandits than the live ones right now. Shaking out bits of half-destroyed clothing got me seven coppers spread across two purses, plus a small pendant that might have been made of silver. And a tortoiseshell comb with pearl inlay and half the teeth missing. They really had picked a crappy place to waylay travellers from, if this was all they'd gotten. I pocketed it all, though. Maybe it would buy me a loaf of bread or something, and I was going to need a comb if I didn't want to cut my hair off. 

"Um, excuse me? Are you going to do anything about them?" 

I looked up to see the mage gesturing in the direction of the bush full of bandits. 

"They're not worth my time," I said. "If they'd figured that out a bit more quickly, they all might still be alive." I hesitated a fraction, then added, "Can you tell me where the nearest town is? Because I have no idea where the fuck we are." Admitting ignorance felt like swallowing ground glass. Ignorance meant you were weak, and being weak meant you were vulnerable. 

"Aquen is about three days that way, or at least that's what they told me at the inn I stayed at last night." The mage pointed south-ish along the more-travelled road that crossed the one I'd been following. "There should be another inn not too far from here," he added. 

Well, maybe I could rob it. "Aquen," I repeated. "Don't think I've ever been there." 

"Neither have I, but it's the largest city in the Coastal States Alliance, and it's a port—perfect for my purposes. I don't know about yours." He grimaced and added, "Could you excuse me for a moment? My anti-nausea spell is wearing off." 

I didn't say anything, just raised my eyebrows. 

"I'm not used to this sort of thing, you know." The mage's gesture took in the dead bandits, adding, with a flash of anger. "We can't _all_ be hardened warriors." He covered his mouth with his hand, then lowered it again, eyeing me warily. 

"So you do have some spirit," I said, feeling one corner of my mouth pull upward in a lazy smile. "I suppose if you didn't, you'd just have rolled over and stripped for these shits." I kicked a half-corpse in the ribs. 

The mage quickly spoke a slurred mumble of an incantation ending in " _Inner Still_ ". "If I had, I doubt they would have left me alive." He ran a hand through his hair, leaving some of it sticking up in sweaty dark-brown peaks. "I'm Taben, by the way—I just realized we never did introductions." 

I froze. Admitting I didn't know where I was had been bad enough without admitting I didn't know _who_ I was to a near-total stranger, but I had to tell him something, and the only thing that popped into my scrabbling mind was, "You can call me Red." 

Taben looked me up and down. "Red. Well, I suppose that's as good as anything. Um. If you're going the same way I am, I'll buy you dinner. If you hadn't shown up when you did . . . I'm terrible at combat spells, and . . ." The mage shrugged. 

I shrugged too. "Why not? Let's have a look at Aquen. It can't be any worse than here." 

"Does that mean . . . can we go now?" 

I surveyed the bodies and the whimpering, rustling thorn bush. "Just one more thing I need to do. Go on ahead—I'll catch up." 

One of the bandits had been wearing a leather cape, and a good-sized section of it had survived intact. The quality of the leather itself was shitty, but it would do for what I had in mind. That, and two belts, some rags, and a few minutes' work gave me a way to carry my sword slung across my back instead of bare against my shoulder. The "work" mostly went into making sure I could draw it without unstrapping it. 

Then I turned and headed off down the south road, still ignoring the pathetic fucking noises from the bush.


	2. Taben

"This beer is crap," Red said, slamming the tankard down on the table. "Or piss, more likely. I'm just not sure what kind of animal it came from." 

"The wine's just as bad," I said, hoping that I was keeping my voice down. 

The "inn" in whose common room we sat was barely worthy of the name. The ceiling was so low that Red couldn't stand up straight. It was smoky, the food and drink were terrible, and there were no real bedrooms—we'd be sleeping on the floor tonight, among the beer-stains and the rushes. At least there didn't seem to be any vomit anywhere, but that might be because no one could drink enough of the swill they served to get really drunk. Well, except for the barmaid. She'd been slurring so badly that my Ear had had a hard time transcribing what she was saying. 

It didn't have that problem with Red, although it did randomly capitalize his words from time to time. For all the profanity he spouted, the big swordsman enunciated clearly enough when he wanted to. 

He really did have to be the oddest person I'd met in my (admittedly short) travels to date. More than seven feet tall, built like a brick outhouse, dressed in rags . . . and yet his eyes were sharp and clear. Intelligent. Red wasn't the down-on-his-luck mercenary that I'd classed him as at first glance. I just wasn't sure what he _was_. 

Right now he was staring into the smoky fire that heated the room and scowling at nothing. The light played odd tricks with the planes of his face, making his roughly-carved features look almost inhuman, eyes disappearing into the shadows cast by his heavy eyebrows. Not a handsome man as such, although he did have an odd streak of charisma. I'd have guessed his age at somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. 

"There something on my face?" he demanded now, turning his attention to me. 

"No, sh-sorry." I caught the slur before my Ear could finish transcribing the word, and corrected it. _Odd. I haven't done that in a long time. He throws me off, somehow—or at least it can't be the wine-vinegar I've been drinking._

"Huh. What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I don't think I've ever met anyone more unfit to be an adventurer-mage. You're softer than a goose-down pillow." 

"Just because I need to speak the entire incantation to cast a Freeze Arrow doesn't mean I'm helpless," I protested. 

Red just smirked. I glared at him for a moment, then gave in and answered his question. "Most caravans that leave Kalmaart heading south are bound for Seyruun, and that wasn't where I wanted to go—not going _through_ it seems pretty stupid in retrospect, though. Once I get to Aquen, I don't intend to leave again for a while." 

"Why not just stay in Kalmaart?" 

"Aquen is the perfect place for me to set up shop again . . . and I had to get out of Vezendi," I admitted with a grimace. 

"Oh?" 

"I . . . um . . ." _Oh, what the hell. I might as well tell him the entire story, or at least enough of the most recent parts to give him context. Even if it's a bit on the embarrassing side._ "It was a choice between leaving on my own, getting run out of town, or marrying the older sister of the head of the Vezendi Sorcerers' Guild chapter." 

"A fate worse than death, of course." 

"I'd have been trying to kill myself within six months. She didn't want a husband, she wanted a lapdog, or maybe a pet golem in human form. And besides, she's twenty years older than me—and uglier than you," I added, since he seemed to like little shows of bravado on my part. 

Red chuckled. My Ear transcribed the sound he made as "Heh," but his voice was powerful enough that I could feel the vibration through the table. "And she just latched on to you." 

"Her brother aimed her at me and pulled the trigger, and she went off like a Jillas Gun. He and I were rivals when we first joined the Guild as apprentices, but I . . . well, it turned out that I'm a flash-in-the-pan wizard. Um, that is—" 

"High bucket capacity but almost no pool to draw from," Red said, to my surprise. I wouldn't have expected him to know enough about magic to be familiar with even that basic teaching analogy . . . but then, I'd only known him a few hours. Hell, he might have been the second coming of Lina Inverse for all I knew—he certainly had the hair for it. "So one, maybe two medium-strong spells, and your hair turns white and you fall on your face." 

I grimaced and nodded. "There was no chance of my getting anywhere in the Guild hierarchy with a handicap like that, but I managed to humiliate the future Guildmaster a few times before we found that out, and he's the kind of person who holds grudges. And he specializes in some of the nastier, subtler types of black magic." 

"Mind Leech," Red said, surprising me again by naming the intelligence-sapping spell. 

I shuddered. "Yes, that's one of his favourites. And Xellos Bind." On-demand stupidity and deep suggestibility—neither of them long-lasting, but excellent for . . . strategic use. Any self-respecting mage could fend them off, but the world was full of people who couldn't even cast a Lighting spell. "And he isn't above using them on people like the head of the city guard." 

There was that smirk again. "Sounds like you got yourself in quite a bind." 

"Yes." Distracted, I took a sip of my wine and just about spat it across the table. Even for something more than half vinegar, it was almost indescribably vile, bitter with an oniony aftertaste. "I had to leave my workshop behind, too—I specialize in packing water shamanism spells into talismans. Aquen struck me as a good place to start over—better than Seyruun, anyway. They say there's a wizard on every street corner there. And it's difficult and expensive to get the components I need in a landlocked city. I was paying several times what they were worth in Vezendi." 

"Hmph." Red turned back to the fire again—I guess he'd lost interest. 

"So that's my story. What about you? I've been thinking about it, and I'm pretty sure the road you came down peters out near the edge of the Desert of Destruction. What were you doing out there? Treasure hunting?" If so, he hadn't been very successful, but I wasn't about to point that out. 

The temperature in the room seemed to drop by several degrees as Red turned slowly back toward me. He stared at me for several moments without speaking, his gaze sharp and probing. Unnerving. 

"Someone drugged me and dumped me there," he said at last. "I don't know who or why, but when I find them I'm going to strangle them with their own guts." 

I had a feeling he wasn't exaggerating. "Do you have any idea where to start looking for them?" 

"Doesn't matter. When they realize I'm still alive, _they'll_ probably come looking for _me_." He looked pleased at the prospect. 

The barmaid, on her way past the table at that moment, slapped a plate down between us. "Here'sh yer bread an' sheese." 

Mostly bread and very little cheese, I observed. Well, it didn't seem to be moldy or infested, at least, although I was pretty sure that the crusts weren't that dark just because the flour was crudely milled. 

The cheese turned out to be surprisingly decent, which was probably why they'd given us so little of it. 

"Sorry about this," I said to Red between mouthfuls. "When I promised to buy you supper, this wasn't really what I had in mind." 

"You can make it up to me tomorrow night," he said. 

I hesitated, then shrugged. If he wanted to sponge off me all the way from here to Aquen, it wasn't like there was any way I could stop him, and, well, I'd have been broke and naked if he hadn't come along when he had. So in a way, he had a right to my money. 

An hour or so later, they extinguished the torches and we settled in for the night. I was going to offer one of the blankets that had been strapped to my pack to Red, but he fell asleep without even looking at me, still sitting up, leaning against a bench with that sword of his propped near his right hand. So I shrugged and took both of the blankets myself. 

I woke to the smell of smoke and an odd, ruddy light that didn't actually illuminate anything. For a moment I was disoriented, wondering where I was and who was shaking me. Then I remembered the run-down inn, and guessed that the big hand gripping my shoulder was Red's, but I still couldn't understand what was going on—I mean, the place had already smelled of smoke when we'd gone to sleep, due to the ineffectiveness of the chimney serving the fireplace. 

"Light-which-burns-beyond-crimson-flame-let-thy-power-gather-here-in-my-hand- _Lighting_ ," I gabbled off as quickly as I could. Once I could see, I realized Red had been yelling at me for a while now. 

"Wake up, you fucking stupid mage! Are you deaf?! _The fucking building's burning down, and we have to get out!_ " And there was a lot more, part of which had scrolled past the upper edge of my Ear's lens. 

"I'm awake now," I said. "Do you have any idea where the fire is? If I can hit it with an Aqua Create—" 

"It's the roof," he interrupted. "Several places." 

"Is there anyone else—" At least four other people, including the barmaid, had been bedded down in here with us. 

"I don't give a fuck! Just move!" 

"I'm surprised you 'give a fuck' about me, either," I said, getting up on my hands and knees and beginning to crawl toward the door while keeping my head below the level of the smoke. 

"I went to the trouble of saving your scrawny ass once, so it belongs to me—not to some idiot arsonist," Red snapped. 

"You mean this wasn't just a spark from—" I coughed as smoke stung my throat, and again. I couldn't seem to stop. Red cursed, and I felt him grab my collar and begin to drag me. A moment later I felt my, as he had put it, "scrawny ass" bump up over the threshold, and then my body was being pulled across the grass. 

Red dropped me on the ground about ten or twelve feet from the burning building, and I began to revive as I took deep breaths of fresh air. The big swordsman didn't stick around, though. Instead, he dumped his sword-harness beside me and went running back toward the inn with the bare blade in his hand, and I watched incredulously as he vaulted up onto the roof. I hadn't expected him to be able to jump his own height in the air, even from a running start . . . but then, his body did seem to be pretty much solid muscle. 

Then the silhouette of his sword was doing something unpleasant to another figure, and I swallowed as I realized that the arsonists were still up there. _Not for long, though, the poor fools._ I'd already figured out that Red wasn't big on mercy. 

I took a deep breath of the cold, clean air. There was no way I could have stopped the tall swordsman even if I'd wanted to, so it was better for me to think about what I _could_ do that might be useful right now, and the obvious thing was putting out the fire. I wouldn't be able to get enough pressure behind an Aqua Create to reach the roof, but if I combined . . . or, wait—was that a well, off to my left? That meant that all I had to do was _move_ the water, which was much easier than creating it. 

By the time I'd finished the incantation and directed the serpentine dragon shape up out of the well, Red had disappeared over the peak of the roof. I dithered for I don't know how long, worried about washing him off, but eventually I decided he could take care of himself and dissipated the dragon right over the highest point of the building. A wave of water cascaded over the thatch, some of it leaking through the holes already burned in it, and a headless body was washed over the edge of the roof to land on the ground. The head followed a moment later, and I grimaced and cast Inner Still. 

A couple of minutes after that, Red came walking around the corner of the building with his sword resting against his shoulder. He wandered over to his makeshift scabbard, ignoring me. 

"What happened?" I asked. 

"Your bandit friends thought they were going to get some revenge," Red said, without turning around. "Fucking idiots. Anyway, it's nearly dawn, so we might as well get moving. Go get your pack." 

I didn't move, because I'd realized there was something I needed to tell him. I really didn't want to, because I preferred that casual acquaintances not know about it, but Red's not-knowing might have gotten me killed tonight. So I licked my lips and forced out, "About what you asked earlier . . ." 

"Hmm?" 

"You asked if I was deaf. Actually, I am." 

That got Red's attention enough that he turned around and raked me with that disconcerting gaze of his again. "You talk pretty well for someone who can't hear what he's saying." 

I tapped the heavy earring that I never took off. "This is a magical transcription device—it renders everything said around me into text and projects it in front of my eye. That includes what I'm saying. I've had it since I was little, and a healer at the temple of Ceiphied in Vezendi helped me learn to talk by matching the sounds I made to the transcription. It isn't perfect, though—I'm told my inflections are off sometimes. And I can't 'hear' anything at all in the dark, because I can't see the text my Ear is rendering." 

"So that's why the first thing you did when you woke up was cast Lighting." 

I nodded. "If you hadn't taken the time to grab me and shake me, I might have died in there. So I figured you should know. Just in case there's a next time." 

Red snorted. "You get many buildings burning down around you?" 

"This is the first time. That doesn't mean there won't be a second one. After all, I had both my first and my second encounters with bandits in the space of one day." 

That got me another long stare. Then, abruptly, Red said, "You know how I told you someone drugged me and dumped me in the middle of nowhere?" 

I nodded. 

"Well, the truth is, I don't remember a thing from before that, either. I woke up with a fucking bush staring at me and no idea what my own name was. I still don't know." 

That . . . well, I really didn't know what to say to that, but my mouth kept on running without my brain being fully attached. "Nothing at all?" 

"Go get your fucking pack, Taben. Before you get on my nerves." 

I covered my mouth with my hand and headed for the door of the wet, smoky inn, because I knew that I'd said more than enough already.


	3. Val

"I told you to . . . Oh, never mind." I glared moodily at the exploded remains of what had been _intended_ to be a campfire. It was better than glaring at Jillas. The fox-man had meant well, and I couldn't entirely blame him for having that grenade tumble out of his coat when the retaining strap had torn. 

"I'm sorry, Val-sama. We'll go gather more wood." Jillas' and Gravos' footsteps crunched off into the scrub forest to look for anything dry and burnable that was larger than a twig while I stayed where I was. 

After a moment, I took my hairbrush out of my pack and loosened the tie at the nape of my neck, allowing my hair to fell free so that I could work out the tangles. It was at what I'd discovered was the maximum length it would agree to reach, roughly down to my waist. I'd kept it that way because it made it easier to pick fights with the kind of idiots that thought only effeminate weaklings wore their hair long, and fights that were supposedly in self-defense didn't get me in much trouble, even from _certain people_ who seemed unable to understand that I enjoyed the contest for its own sake. 

This was not where I had intended to end up after leaving home. Then again, I hadn't been intending to leave for a couple more years, when I might have had a bit more money saved up. Well, all right: I'd stormed off in a fit of temper on my twentieth birthday, because my foster-mother didn't understand when questions _had_ to be answered. And I wasn't going back. 

_What happened to my real parents?_ Such a simple question. I'd been asking it since I was four years old and I'd figured out that there was no possible way that a golden dragon and an ancient dragon could be blood relations, which meant Aunt Filia couldn't be my real mother. 

She dissembled every time. As a hatchling, I hadn't been bright enough to notice. As an adolescent, I'd sulked. 

As an adult, I wasn't going to let her off the hook. 

_You must have seen them at least once._

_Val . . ._

Even Xellos hadn't been willing to tell me the truth the several times I'd asked him, not that I'd be willing to trust anything that came from the lips of the fourth-most-powerful Mazoku still in existence. When I'd been five, he'd told me Aunt Filia had found my egg in a roc's nest. I'd believed that for just over a month. The story about the pawn shop, when I was seven, had only kept me convinced for about a week, and the one about the auction house the next year I'd seen through immediately. 

The one time it had seemed like he might be about to tell me something that wasn't an outright fabrication, Aunt Filia had hit him in the head with a mace. Even for a Mazoku, that was a bit distracting. He hadn't tried again. 

_Stop trying to get out of this._

_Val, please . . ._

Jillas and Gravos knew something, or they wouldn't have been calling me "Val-sama" since before I was old enough to talk, but they'd been silenced about their reasons by some kind of curse, and I wasn't good enough at white magic to unravel it . . . or stupid enough to try. I'd seen enough of Xellos' handiwork to recognize it when I came across it. 

_I know you didn't just find my egg. My tribe died in the Kouma War, you told me so yourself. Dragon eggs don't stay viable and unhatched for a thousand years. What aren't you telling me, Aunt Filia?_

From there, the conversation had degenerated into the worst argument I'd ever had with her, but she'd remained steadfast in refusing to tell me what I'd wanted to know, and in the end I'd stormed off to my room, stuffed a few changes of clothes into my camping pack on top of my gear, pocketed my savings, grabbed my lance, and found the first ship out of there. I hadn't even asked where it was heading until after we had cast off. Jillas and Gravos had had to jump from the dock to get aboard, and the fox just about hadn't made it. 

By the time we'd gotten to the port at the far end, which had turned out to be the city of Selnos in southern Ralteague, I'd had time to think about things a bit. I knew that at around the time I'd been hatched, Aunt Filia had been travelling with several other people, most of whom I hadn't seen since my dragon form was small enough to fit inside a kitchen cupboard. Well, except Xellos, but I wasn't really sure he deserved to be called a person. Still, maybe one of the others knew something . . . and I had names and, in one case, a place to start looking for the person the name belonged to: 

Lina Inverse, self-described sorcery genius, slayer of Hellmaster Phibrizzo. 

Gourry Gabriev, the Swordsman of Light, her companion and guard. 

Zelgadis Greywords, chimera grandson of Rezo the Red Priest. 

And Princess Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, daughter of King Philionel Di Seyruun, whose location had to be known in her home kingdom. I'd even been there once, when Aunt Filia had been invited to the princess' wedding, although I'd been so young at the time that I didn't remember much now. 

So I was now travelling west on the Coast Road toward the port of Aquen, where I intended to turn north and make for Seyruun City, in search of my heritage. 

It sounded better than "I'm running away from my foster-mother", anyway. 

Something rustled in the bushes. 

"Jillas?" I called. 

A snuffling noise came from among the leaves. 

_Not Jillas,_ I thought. _Or Gravos._

I yanked the leather hood off the major blade of my lance. The satin-smooth wood of the shaft slid easily through my hands as I brought the weapon up into a guard position and used the slider to expose the slender secondary blade. 

Aunt Filia had never approved of my chosen weapon, although her reasons for that were one of the other things she'd never talked about. All I knew was that the double-ended spear had felt natural in my hands from the moment I'd first picked up a practice version of it. I'd been twelve years old at the time, and since then I'd put hundreds of hours into mastering it. 

I held it braced crosswise now as I waited for whatever was hiding in the underbrush to come out. 

It must have been a very young boar to be so stupid as to charge straight at an armed man, never mind an armed _dragon_. The fight was over much too soon for my tastes. 

It made a nice pork roast, though. Mind you, it would have been better with some roast tubers and applesauce, but I hadn't been about to bring an entire kitchen with me on our trip, and none of us was much for cooking anyway. If we wanted a more elaborate meal, it would have to wait until we got to Aquen tomorrow. 

I might even have wished for a larger pig, because the one we'd gotten was only just big enough to satisfy the full appetites of a humanform dragon and a couple of beastmen. As usual, Gravos and Jillas refused to let me take a watch—they'd divide the night's most boring task between themselves while their "Val-sama" slept. 

It never occurred to them that I might have _wanted_ to stay up for a while, and they were always so damned earnest about it that I gave in to them in the end. And besides, there were nights when the dreams didn't come and I slept peacefully. 

However, it didn't look like this was going to be one of those lucky nights. 

The nightmare always began with darkness and the smell of blood and ozone. I was a hatchling, maybe the equivalent of a human five-year-old, lying curled against the cooling dead bulk of an older dragon while lights flickered overhead among the clouds. 

"Mama?" I nosed the body, then bit it, hard. Hatchling-me expected a claw-swat in return, but all I got was the taste of cooling meat. I was too small to grasp what the bone-deep burns on the grown dragon's head meant, although in the waking world, I'd reconstructed the scenario several times and tried to make sense out of it, of the burned dragons and the flashes of laser breath overhead. 

Dragons fighting dragons. Golden dragons slaughtering my people . . . but if the ancient dragons had been wiped out in the Kouma War, that logically meant they'd been killed by Mazoku. Or by Lei Magnus, although from what I understood that had been a distinction without a difference by the time the war had ended. 

Little-dream-me didn't know a thing about that, of course, but he disappeared as something grabbed him by the back of the neck, shook him hard, and flung him into darkness . . . into flight. This time the flashes were all around me, laser breath shooting in all directions as I fought against the pain in my side to keep my no-longer-hatchling body airborne. 

It was a losing battle, and a misjudged manoeuvre soon caused the wind to spill from my wings. I plummeted to the ground, plowing a long path in the desert sands before I came to a stop. _Need to hide, need to hide, need to hide . . ._ It wafted through my pain-fuzzed brain that it was easier to hide a small human than a large dragon, and I somehow managed to shift and crawl in among a pile of rocks poking up out of the sand. None too soon, either, because two golden dragons soon landed on either side of the track I'd left. 

"He isn't here," one of them said. 

"Must have taken off again. Come on, let's go finish the rest of these bastards." 

I waited for several minutes after they were gone before using the rocks to pull myself to my feet so that I could begin to work my way across the desert sands, with one arm clutched to my injured side. I could feel warm wetness across the palm of my hand: the abused, burned flesh had torn and was oozing blood, and I could feel a jangle inside that suggested my ribs were smashed to junk and likely stabbing around inside me like knives. It hurt to breathe, never mind move, and I didn't dare cast even the least healing spell for fear of drawing attention from the goldens, Ceiphied rot their carcasses, so my life was going to slowly leak away if I didn't find help soon. But I wasn't going to give up. I would fight to the last, for my people and for myself. 

There was something abroad in the night, a massive but concealed astral presence too smudged for me to make out what it might have belonged to. All I knew for certain was that it was too strong to be another golden dragon. Well, perhaps I'd head in that direction then. One way or another, my luck would probably change if I did. 

Then my foot slipped, and I was falling again, into darkness and all-encompassing pain—physical, astral, emotional. My shoulders burned with a fire that suggested dislocation, my right arm pulsed with agony, my astral being felt as though it had been stretched out of shape then flayed of its outer covering, and there was a raw place inside me where my bond to my chosen mate should have been. Never mind that we had established the bond only for convenience, in order to create a form of contact that wouldn't be cut off by the Barrier. I still missed him desperately . . . and didn't dare admit it, because he had despised shows of weakness. 

Damn that sorceress! Damn her to hell! 

And on that thought, I snapped awake, feeling as though I'd swallowed acid. The dream always ended the same way, with the curse against some nameless magic-user and the agony of the broken mate-bond. Sometimes there were other vague scenes just before the last. Standing on a mountain peak with the wind in my face as the mate-bond snapped and a mass of power backlashed into me, knocking me out cold. Lying in a bed with my eyes shut and a human body much larger than my alternate form curled against my back, the wordless sleepy mumble of a deep voice, strong arms holding me in a comforting prison while my astral self was cradled by a being far more massive. In some ways, that last scene was the worst, because it made me feel safe. Protected. And I didn't _want_ to be beholden to someone else for protection. Just the thought made me feel ashamed. 

The center of my forehead was prickling, as it sometimes did, and I rubbed it while staring at Jillas where he was snoring beside the fire—he and Gravos might _claim_ to keep watch, but they weren't really any good at it. 

I'd never quite dared tell anyone about the dreams, or at least not since I'd been small enough to run to Jillas for comfort in the middle of the night, but I'd been experiencing the same handful of scenes at least once a month ever since I could remember. The lack of variation suggested that they were more than just the wanderings of my sleeping mind, but they couldn't represent reality, either, because they didn't make sense. Dragons fighting dragons. Being mated to another male, which I was pretty sure ran against custom, if not law, even among ancient dragons. Biting the corpse of a mother I had never known. I did have memories of being five, but they involved things like playing tag with Jillas and Gravos and being scolded for knocking all the vases off the top shelf in the shop, not darkness and blood and battle. 

Unless it was all a lie. 

I snorted softly. I'd had that thought before, as an adolescent. But if the dreams were the reality, why did I have provable, internally consistent memories of my current life? There were such things as memory-rewriting illusions, true, but everything I'd read about them agreed that the details of such an illusion were never quite right. If my life now was real, then the one in the dreams couldn't be, and vice-versa. Or at least I couldn't think of any way to reconcile them. 

I forced myself to lie down again and curl up on my side. Maybe I'd feel better after I got a bit more sleep.


	4. "Red"

We got to Aquen on Midsummer's Eve, just after lunch. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a single place in the city willing to rent us a room. All the inns and the boarding houses were full to overflowing with people who had come to participate in the Midsummer Festival. 

One thing about sleeping under a tree was that there weren't any fucking fleas, I reflected, absently scratching my ribs as I curled up with my back to a yew in a field outside the city. And there would be a lot of cheap festival food—maybe not the most healthy stuff to be eating, but I didn't give a shit. It might let me go one more day without spending all of the copper coins I'd taken off the dead bandits. I still hadn't figured out what I was going to do about a new shirt, though. 

I'd been sitting there maybe half an hour, thinking, when Taben got back, carrying four skewers of meat and vegetables. There was a rolled-up piece of paper sticking from his pocket. 

"Here," he said, and passed two skewers to me, then used the hand he'd freed up to dump the rolled paper in my lap. "I thought you might be interested in this." 

I pulled a chunk of meat and one of onion off the oiled wood with my teeth, and had a look at the paper as I chewed. _Midsummer Combat Tournament,_ I read. Then there was a bad woodcut of two swordsmen, a start time, entry rules, and a list of prizes. The listing for first prize involved a currency symbol and four zeroes. 

Currency was kind of a variable thing, so it might meant five thousand copper pieces . . . but even that might be enough to buy me a shirt. Rules . . . Entries closed at mid-morning on the day of the festival, and the tournament would begin at noon. No magic could be used—this was supposed to be a pure contest of arms. Bring your own weapons and armour. Fights were one-on-one, match-ups drawn at random, and ended when one fighter was unable to continue, signalled his surrender, or was forced out of the space set out for the duel. Seriously injuring an opponent would result in his healing fees being deducted from your prize, if you won one. Killing your opponent meant instant disqualification. 

"Pretty wishy-washy, but I could use the cash," I said, and turned my attention to my second skewer. 

"Only you could describe a competition involving the risk of death or dismemberment 'wishy-washy'," Taben said, then belched. I wondered if he was aware of the sound it made. 

"Well, you're pretty wishy-washy yourself," I said, and smirked. Really, the mage was a hopeless little cream puff who should never have left his native city . . . but having saved his ass a couple of times, I was finding that I felt oddly possessive of him. Although there was something about the nature of his deafness, about unhealable sensory dysfunction, that bothered me. I just couldn't put my finger on it. No doubt the explanation was hidden somewhere in my missing memory. 

"Shut up," Taben said, but it didn't have any force behind it. "I asked a few people whether they'd seen anyone matching your description. So far, I haven't gotten any real reactions, just blank looks. Oh, and one person who noticed you on the road on the way in, but that isn't exactly useful. I'll keep trying." 

Having Taben check for people who knew me while he poked around the city had been the best plan that either of us had been able to come up with. Anyone who did know me might run away if they saw me in person, or try to attack, but Taben should be able to walk right up to them and ask questions without arousing any suspicion. 

It was always possible that I really never had been to Aquen before, or any other city in the myriad of little countries and city-states making up Coastal States Alliance, which would make it less likely that I'd be recognized . . . but people from abroad would be passing through a port city all the time, so it was just a matter of waiting until someone who knew me did turn up. 

Really, I was surprised that waiting didn't bother me more. It seemed that I was used to spending a lot of time with only myself for company and not doing anything in particular except turning stuff over in my head. I didn't think that was usual for a fighter, but then what did I fucking know? Maybe I'd done a stint in some monastery or ascetic knightly order, meditating while sitting under waterfalls. Although the fact that I found the idea funny made it a lot less likely. 

The set of facts I'd collected about myself were as pathetic as Taben's fighting skills, really. I was literate, or at least I could read road signs easily and fluently. I liked a good, bitter dark beer more than any other kind of alcohol I'd tried so far. I didn't get drunk easily, but that could just be my size. I also liked red meat, ideally rare, and artichokes with lemon. I didn't know how to sew. And that was it—everything I had learned about myself since I'd met up with Taben. 

There had to be more to me than that. I could feel something else, something _big_ , hovering just beyond the reach of my mind. It was fucking frustrating, but there was nothing I could do about it. The information would come in its own time, or it wouldn't. 

Still, I was thinking of stepping up my self-discovery efforts. I hadn't even attempted magic yet. And there was a whole range of physical and mental skills, from riding to lacemaking to reading ancient languages, that I might have without being aware of them. 

Lacemaking. I snorted. The idea of a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall wall of muscle having something like that as a hobby was the funniest idea I'd come up with yet. Then again, I'd never have thought I liked artichokes, either. 

"You know," Taben said abruptly, "I haven't been to Ceiphied's temple yet. I meant to offer thanks for getting here in one piece, to him and to Ragradia." 

"Ragradia's _dead_ ," I growled, unable to help myself. The name of the Aqualord stirred something in my mind, and it shot out pinpoints of red rage and bitter black hatred like a demented firework. "So is Ceiphied, for that matter. What's the point of praying to a pair of fucking corpses?" 

"Some remnants of them still linger," Taben said. "And they died for the sake of the world, holding back Ruby-Eye and the Chaos Dragon. Their memory deserves respect. Why do you care, anyway?" 

_Because it feels intolerable that someone beholden to me should worship the dragon gods . . ._ but when I reached for the reason why, it was like I'd run face first into a fucking stone wall inside my head. My locked memory wasn't going to give up its secrets so easily. 

"Do whatever you want," I said, trying to sound bored. "I'm going to get a little practice in." My hand caressed the hilt of my sword. 

Taben gave me a flinty look through his monocle. "That might be best. I'll see you tonight." 

I pulled my sword out and laid it across my lap, pretending to examine the edge for nicks, because I was pretty sure that was something you did with swords. Sharpening them, too . . . but this one never seemed to need that kind of care. Magic, or just a really good alloy? Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know? It felt like an extension of my arm, so I had to have had it a long time, but that wasn't exactly useful information now. 

By the time I looked up again, Taben had left. I decided to move away from the tree a bit, so as not to cut it down by mistake. If I wanted that kind of work-out, there were plenty of bushes around that deserved it more. I was probably going to hate bushes for the rest of my life. But first, I was curious to see whether I could replicate the shockwave effect I'd used against "Boss" and his friends intentionally. 

I had a practice routine. I was a little surprised by that. After thinking about it for a moment, I was also surprised that I was surprised. I'd gone through those bandits like a hot knife through butter, so I probably was just as good as I thought I was, and good swordsmen practiced to get that way, didn't they? But it felt more like my fighting skills came from somewhere deep inside my core—part of my being, not learned, conscious, and practiced. 

Half an hour later, the routine wound down naturally, and I flopped down under the tree again, beside Taben's pack. Idly, I plucked a few grass stems and let my fingers do whatever they wanted with them, which turned out to be some kind of complicated six-stranded braid. Where in hell had I learned _that_? More to the point, why had I _wanted_ to? 

My nose twitched as I stared at the braided grass. There was some faint but pleasant scent wafting my way from . . . who knew where, really? But I was curious, and puzzled. It wasn't a food scent, or anything floral, and yet I liked it very much and wanted to seek out its source. More than that, it seemed familiar. 

I pushed myself to my feet and slowly scanned the area, looking for . . . well, anything, really. 

Off to my left, three middle-aged women were weeding a field. _Not them_ , some instinct told me, and in any case, they were in the wrong direction for the wind to carry any smells from them to me. 

Nearer the wall surrounding Aquen proper, a tent city had sprung up. If the smell was coming from something in that mess, I'd never be able to trace it. 

Sweeping out to my right until it disappeared into the distance was the western branch of the Coast Road. There were people moving along it, plenty of them. From my vantage point, they ranged from tiny pinpoints on the horizon to around the size of my hand. 

Merchants with wagons full of goods. Peasants with wagons full of relatives. Travellers on foot or horseback, alone or in small groups. Mostly human, but there was one very odd little trio that was being given a wide berth by most of the wagons. 

The person at the center was human in proportion and colouring, give or take some hair dye, but too far away for me to pick up minor details like whether they were male or female. A much smaller being trotted alongside the human, taking two steps to each of its taller companion's. I squinted. A fox beastman? Colour and size looked about right, which would make this stranger the first beastman I had seen today. 

The third figure was taller than the human, and much broader. And blue-green. But it was also too short to be a troll, and in any case a lone troll moving among humans would have been beyond odd. Even when they were hired to fill out the ranks of an army led by some unscrupulous human warlord, the trolls kept mostly to themselves when they weren't actually fighting. This creature, I decided, was at most a troll mix, or perhaps a golem, chimera, or some exotic form of beastman. 

Regardless, they were a _very_ odd group, and seeing the three of them together was making me damned curious. And the wind touched the road before it reached me, so they _could_ have been the source of that enticing scent. Theoretically, I was supposed to stay here and make sure Taben's pack didn't get stolen, but it shouldn't be at too much risk if I hung it in the tree . . . and if someone found it anyway, well, that was just too bad, because I didn't really care what happened to it all that much. 

Once I had the pack hooked over a branch at the limit of my reach, I shouldered my sword and began to head downhill toward the messy tent city. 

Close up, it went beyond messy and on into "fucking disaster area". The only opening between the various tents and parked wagons that was wide enough for two carts to pass each other followed the line of the Coast Road. Anywhere else, you were at the mercy of where people had chosen to set their belongings and had to elbow your way through if you wanted to get anywhere. Well, most people did. I could get people to move out of my path just by smiling in their direction. Kind of nice, even if it meant that Taben's efforts to gather information about me without forcing me to expose myself were likely to be a lot less useful now. 

The odd trio I'd seen before weren't anywhere in sight now, but they'd been following the road, and I couldn't see how they could have gotten much further ahead, so I'd just follow the road too, and see where it got me. 

A quarter-hour later, I was thinking that maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all. For one thing, people might move out of my way, but the fucking carts didn't. For another, once a little while had gone by without my pulling out my sword and cutting anyone in half, a few of the bolder street merchants had tried to approach me. I'd experimented with picking one of them up and throwing him at a flimsy tent-stall-thing, which collapsed around him quite nicely, and they'd backed off again . . . but in the process of making that throw, I'd stepped in a pile of horseshit, and the reek still clinging to my boot was getting on my nerves. 

I scowled as I realized I was nearly at the city gates, and still hadn't seen any sign of the peculiar trio. After my merchant-flinging exhibition, most of the people covertly watching me were probably scared shitless of the big red-head with the sword, and I didn't want to have to spend time talking anyone down in order to get a coherent answer to a question out of them. _Fuck._

I looked around, searching for anyone who wasn't trying to watch me and edge away while looking like they weren't watching me at all. Even the gate guards were eyeing me warily and taking a firmer grip on their spears. 

There were two guys off in my peripheral vision who didn't seem to be making jerky little movements, though. When I turned to face them fully, the banner above their table—the one that said _Aquen Midsummer Combat Tournament Registration_ —suggested the reason why. They'd probably been seeing people like me come and go all day. 

I shrugged—well, I'd been meaning to sign up anyway, so why _not_ do it now? And ask a few questions while I was at it. 

One of the two nondescript middle-aged men sitting behind the table looked up at me as I approached . . . and up, and up, and up. He blinked. 

"No need to ask why you're here, sir, although you're certainly the tallest contestant we've seen today. Please sign this, and add your name to this list here." 

I picked the first document up and skimmed it quickly. Some kind of insurance waiver. I snorted and picked up the pen, then hesitated a moment, half-hoping that my fingers would automatically scrawl some name. No such luck, so I signed it as _Red_ and added that name to their list. The middle-aged official blinked and shrugged as he read it. 

"Thank you . . . Red-dono. Please be at the arena at noon tomorrow for the first round." 

"Right," I said. "By the way, did three very odd people come through here recently? A guy travelling with a fox-man, and some kind of troll mix?" 

Another blink. "The young man was the last one to sign up before yourself." 

I glanced down at the list I'd just added myself to. The next-to-last name read _Val Ul Copt._

"Guess he isn't who I thought he was," I said with a shrug. 

_Val Ul Copt._ I tested the name in my mind as I turned around and began to work my way back between the mass of tents. _Val_ felt . . . familiar, like that mysterious scent and the glint of sunlight off blue-green hair, but _Ul Copt_ . . . 

_Why does a human have a golden dragon surname?_

The thought popped into my head as I was waiting impatiently for two carts to lurch past each other and open up a little space. To be exact, the Ul Copt family were part of the Flarelord's votary clan, or so my unreliable memory told me. 

The young man I'd seen on the coast road hadn't been a golden dragon, though. Not unless he'd dyed his hair. And one of those stuck-up pricks would never have been caught dead travelling with beastmen or trolls. A renegade? 

I felt my mouth stretch slowly into a grin. Whatever he was, I'd find out tomorrow, because I was somehow sure he wouldn't be knocked out in the first round of the tournament. Nah, we'd end up facing each other in the final. The universe wouldn't have put this mystery in my path if I hadn't been meant to solve it.


	5. Taben

"You are the most damned _exasperating_ person I've ever met," I said as Red shrugged out of his makeshift sword harness and leaned the weapon up against the tree. "You wander away for a walk, and while you're gone, someone steals my pack! All my supplies, gone! Because _you_ have no sense of responsibility!" 

Red glanced up, then reached above his head and lifted down . . . my pack. "Guess you didn't have the brains to look up either," he said with that lazy, arrogant smirk of his. "Catch." 

He threw the pack one-handed—proving again that he really was ridiculously strong, since I had a hard time even lifting it that way. It hit me in the stomach, and I sat down involuntarily and spat a curse that was worthy of . . . well, _him_. 

"I was signing myself up for the tournament," Red added. "Anything interesting happen while you were off talking to your dead dragon-gods?" 

"Only if you count bad-interesting," I said sourly. "The creation and sale of magical talismans in Aquen is regulated by the local Sorcerers' Guild, and it seems that their chairman received a letter from Vezendi a few days ago." 

"Heh. Guess your luck hasn't gotten any less shitty. So where are you going to go from here?" 

I shrugged. "Up the coast to Ralteague and then Lyzeille, I guess. The Guild chair in New Sairaag doesn't really get along with anyone from Vezendi, so I doubt she would listen to any recommendations from that quarter. The city's landlocked, of course, but right now it looks like that's the best I can do." 

"Sairaag," Red said, his expression going pensive. "The City of Ghosts." 

"I understand that they've gotten rid of all of those now." 

Red shook his head. "No, it's been called that since before the Kouma War. Something about the place makes it just too fucking easy to create life there . . . or recreate it. Or just mess with it. That's why the Sorcerer's Guild there had a big sideline in cloning and chimeras." 

"Have you ever been there?" I asked tentatively. 

"I don't know. My head seems to be full of information, but not a hell of a lot of sensory impressions that would tell me how I came across it. It could just be something I read somewhere." 

"I take it you haven't figured out anything else." 

"Horses hate me. If they can't run away when I get near them, they try to crap on my boots. Other than that, not a damned thing." 

"Will you be staying here? After the tournament?" I wasn't quite sure which of the obvious answers I wanted him to give. Travelling with a caravan, or taking a ship, would definitely be better for my nerves, but Red was an effective protector, even if his arrogance drove me insane. 

"I don't see any point. If there's anyone here that knows me, they'll know I'm in town when I win the final, and either approach me or make themselves scarce. So if there's anything to find out here, I'll know it by supper tomorrow, and unless it's insanely interesting, I'll be ready to move on in a couple of days. North-west up the Coast Road seems like as good a direction as any." 

And that was that. I reassured myself that at least Red was a known evil. 

"I was hoping that this would be my last night sleeping under the stars," I said as I laid out my blanket. 

"Not that we've been doing a lot of that," Red muttered. He frowned and tilted his head, as though searching for the scent of something on the wind. 

"It's a good thing, because you'd freeze on a cold night. You should spend part of that five thousand on a proper bedroll." And now I was doing it too: talking as though his victory in the tournament was a sure thing. Granted, he was a really good fighter, but that didn't mean there weren't any _other_ really good fighters participating. 

"And a change of clothes that hasn't been torn to shit. There's some other stuff I want too, but it can wait. Don't suppose you thought to buy supper, or did you drop it on the ground when you were looking for your precious pack?" 

"I should hide your sword from you and see how _you_ like it," I grumbled. 

"Not if you want to live." Red raised an eyebrow. 

I rolled my eyes. " _Yes_ , I got supper, you asshole swordsman, and you're going to pay me back for every meal and every inn room you've sponged off me as soon as you can afford it. I put the food down carefully when I noticed my pack was missing, so it should still be in one piece. Just a minute." 

I found the two well-wrapped meatball subs resting on the tree root where I'd left them, and handed Red his. There was a long silence while we ate. I'd noticed before that Red's table manners were unexpectedly good, even when he was eating with his fingers. Like his literacy, it was another tiny hint that he was more than he seemed at first. We still needed a lot more puzzle pieces before they added up to a complete puzzle, though, and until we had them there was no real point in trying to assemble them and figure out what the picture on the box had been. 

Instead of trying to unravel the puzzle, I scratched a nine-men's morris board in a patch of bare dirt with a stick, and collected pebbles until I had nine dark and nine light ones. Red turned out to know the game already, and I wasn't surprised to discover he was a cut-throat player. We played a couple of dozen rounds before it was too dark to see, and I didn't win once. After that, I bedded down for the night. 

I woke up in the small hours of the morning. The moon was out, and bright enough to see not only Red's silhouette where he leaned against the tree, but the transcription of his snoring on the eyepiece of my Ear. It made me kind of grateful for my non-ability. 

"Kill him." 

My eyes went wide. That hadn't been a transcription, that had been . . . oh, no. No! 

"Kill him. He is utterly tainted. A terrible danger to us!" 

There was an aura around Red. Red light rotted through with darkness. I could taste it, smell it, and it was as foul as three-day fish. 

My hand went instinctively to the short knife I carried, for cutting food and as a general tool, and pulled it from its sheath. I had to force the fingers to loosen, one by one, and drop it. 

"Kill him!" 

_Like hell I will!_ I curled into a ball. If I couldn't be certain that my will was my own, then I would do _nothing at all_ , not even to save my own life. 

I don't know how long I stayed there with my hands gripping my ankles, that rotten stench in my nostrils, my mouth flooded with the taste of bile, and a red haze in front of my eyes. It might have been a couple of minutes or a couple of hours before the stench and the redness faded. I waited a while longer before allowing myself to uncoil and take deep breaths of the cold night air. 

I had never in my life heard birdsong, or the crackle of a fire, or my mother crooning a lullaby to me as she leaned over my cradle. The only thing I had ever heard was . . . that. The Voice. Hell, I didn't even know how I understood what it was saying. I just always had. 

I'd been about four the first time it had spoken to me, and being young and ignorant, I'd followed its directions without question for the first and last time. I'd ended up effectively destroying the Midwinter Festival for the entire city that year, which had gotten me in massive amounts of trouble and not been nearly as much fun as the Voice had promised. Even the child-me had been able to figure out that the Voice lied, after that, and I'd refused to go along with it next time it spoke up. 

I'd been at war with it ever since. After a couple of years of refusing to obey, I'd started sleepwalking, my body acting at its behest while my mind was disengaged. That battle had been the only one I hadn't needed to fight alone—my parents had taken me to Ceiphied's temple, had me exorcised, and I'd gotten a charm necklace that kept me from moving or casting when I was asleep. I still wore it, under my clothing. None of the priests had been able to perceive the voice, though, and the exorcism hadn't gotten rid of it. But I didn't dare speak of it. I was old enough by then to understand what happened to people who claimed to hear disembodied voices. 

It had been quiet since I'd started studying magic. Maybe too quiet. It had never asked me to kill before. 

Red was still asleep, the transcriptions of his snores flowing up my Ear, and I studied him thoughtfully. That aura wasn't visible now, but I certainly remembered it. Red and black . . . I had no idea whether that was normal or not. Or it could have been a complete fabrication, an illusion created by the Voice. 

_Utterly tainted._ With what? 

_A terrible danger to us._ I hadn't yet seen Red attack anyone who hadn't challenged him first. I couldn't see him being a danger to me. To the Voice? Well, maybe, but so far he didn't even know it was there. 

I could suggest that we go our separate ways, but it would be difficult to pull that off without explaining why, given that Red had nowhere in particular that he needed to be. And—great Ceiphied!—having him be the first person I _ever_ told I was subject to hallucinations . . . No. No, there was no way I could make myself go through with that. I'd just have to keep it under control. The voice had been silent for more than ten years now. Maybe once I was settled in New Sairaag, it would go quiet again. Lord Ceiphied, please . . . Red could probably look after himself, but if it started trying to get me to attack other people . . . 

I swallowed, and, very, very slowly, I reached out and picked up my knife. Tested the edge. I kept it good and sharp. 

If the voice started trying to get me to attack other people, well, at worst I could make sure that it lost its pawn.


	6. Val

"Good luck, Val-sama!" Jillas looked almost sniffly. 

"Thanks, Jillas. Don't worry—I'll be fine." People were starting to give us dirty looks—well, we were half-blocking the main entrance to the arena, forcing the crowds to part around us. And it was almost noon. "Look, if I don't get going soon, I'm going to be disqualified. Cheer me on from the stands, all right?" 

"Of course, Val-sama!" 

I turned away from Jillas and Gravos, shouldered my lance, and climbed the three shallow steps leading to the entrance. 

"Spectator or contestant?" asked a man wearing a badge with the city's crest on it clipped to his collar. 

"Contestant," I said firmly. 

"Name?" 

"Val Ul Copt." 

He ran his finger down a list, stopping near the halfway point. "Right. You're down there, then." He pointed at a narrow staircase leading down, away from the much wider ones leading up into the stands. "The draw for first pairings should be in about ten minutes. Good luck." 

"Thanks." 

It would have been nice, I reflected as I picked my way down, if I hadn't needed to do this at all, but money was starting to get tight. My savings would have been up to paying for food and lodging for one human-form dragon for a while yet, but having to subsidize Jillas and Gravos as well was eating the money fast. I could have gone treasure-hunting or something, but beating up a bunch of humans (and maybe a few beastmen or whatever) seemed as though it would be a lot quicker. After all, there weren't many beings who could best a dragon in a purely physical competition . . . but maybe there would be someone who could at least give me a run for my money. That would be fun. 

There was a door at the bottom of the stairs. I opened it, stepped forward into the doorway . . . and stopped, because I could feel that something wasn't right. After a moment, I managed to figure it out: there was a looming astral presence in the room beyond. 

Someone among the twenty-odd people now staring at me was definitely not human. 

My eyes darted quickly from one to the next. Short, broad-shouldered man, bald, scarred face, carrying a morning star. Not him. Wolf-man, mud-coloured, testing the edge of a curved sword. Not him. Woman, tall and skinny, with short, dark hair and red lips, frowning as she checked the strap holding her right greave in place. Not her, either. 

"Hey, kid, close the door before you let all the luck out. Or are you scared? Feel free to run home to your mommy, then." 

"Scared? Of you?" The speaker had been one of a trio of men in leather armour who were standing to my right. "I was just trying to let some of the stench out, but if you insist . . ." I stepped forward, pulling the door shut, and gave all three of them a lazy smile. If they tried to pick a fight, that would be three less people for me to fight later on. 

"Funny, kid. Real funny. Not gonna waste my energy on you right now, but tonight, after you've lost . . ." 

I kept my smile in place. "Who says I'm going to lose?" Men like this were like wild dogs, I knew: they'd attack if you showed weakness, but put up a strong front, and they'd run away. 

"You might," said a very deep voice from the back of the dimly-lit room. "But not to them." Strong, white teeth flashed in the gloom as the figure, little more than a silhouette, shifted . . . and so did that massive astral presence. _This_ was the person I'd sensed. 

I wove my way through the room toward him, idly stepping over a leg extended to trip me by some joker who must not have realized his movement would show up in my peripheral vision. The stranger was a big man, his head nearly brushing the ceiling, and his blood-red hair gleamed in the light of the torches. His clothes were a mess, so badly tattered and torn that they revealed a glimpse of a muscular arm here and a bit of chest hair there, but I doubted there was anything worn or tattered about the sword whose scabbard stuck out from behind his back. 

I liked him instantly, which surprised me. I'd never felt such a strong affinity with anyone before. What _was_ he? He looked human, but that could be an illusion. 

"I'm Val Ul Copt," I said, offering him my hand. 

"Call me Red," he said, with a lazy smirk. His hand was warm, broad, callused—very human-feeling, but then, so was my slenderer one. Testing, I squeezed, gradually increasing the pressure beyond what a human should have been able to handle. After a moment, his smirk widened, and he bore down strongly enough to make me wince. 

"This should be interesting," I said as we both let go. Oh, yes, this man would definitely be a _challenge_. I could feel my blood pumping hotter even as I thought of it. 

"I should fucking well _hope_ so," Red said. "I'll treat you to dinner when I win." 

I offered him a predatory grin. "Don't get overconfident. Maybe _I'll_ buy _you_ dinner when _I_ win." 

He chuckled, a deep rumbling noise like someone shaking a box of rocks. "Oh, I _do_ like you." 

"It's mutual," I admitted. What in hell _was_ he? Maybe if I'd been able to examine him more clearly on the astral, I could have figured it out, but I needed to be in a trance state for that and there was no time for it now. 

My nostrils flared as I caught a hint of a smell mixed in with the body odours of all those humans and beastmen. Musky, warm, and familiar. Another dragon? Could he be . . . ? 

A man wearing one of the city badges clipped to his collar appeared in a doorway in the wall opposite the door I'd entered by. "We're about to draw for pairings. This way, please." 

I shouldered my lance and followed him out. I could feel Red's looming astral self falling in behind me. The humans seemed ignorable by comparison. I knew I was going to have to be careful about that. It would be utterly embarrassing to be taken out by a much weaker being before I had the chance to fight Red. 

We turned a corner, and the sudden flare of sunlight almost blinded me. Several hundred humans and beastmen cheered as we stepped out onto the sands of the arena, which had been divided with white paint into squares with walkways between them. 

Somewhere above us in the stands, an announcer cleared his throat. "We have twenty-nine contestants this year, so the first round will have thirteen pairs and three byes!" 

Another official carrying a pot approached the man who had led us here. He shook the pot several times, and then the other man withdrew two slips of paper from it. 

"Ardishey Fizzbar and Lamneel Tellura! Please choose a duelling square and enter it to wait for the starting signal!" 

Ardishey was the bald morning-star-wielder I'd noticed when I'd first joined the contestants. With a little luck, he'd be knocked out early—most of the other contestants were carrying swords or maces, so my lance gave me the advantage of reach over everyone but Ardishey, Red, and one slender, weedy man who had a pair of coiled whips riding at either hip. If I misjudged distances and wasn't able to close, I'd deserve to lose. 

Red was called for the fourth pair, along with the man with the whips. After that, I could only wait for my name to be called, gritting my teeth and refusing to fidget as the group around me dwindled. 

"Val Ul Copt, Rena Meeth, and Changoro! You have byes for this round—use the time wisely!" 

_Shit._ I hadn't really _wanted_ to sit this round out . . . but at least it would give me a chance to watch Red and figure out how I was going to beat him. Or watch him get knocked out in this round due to overconfidence. That might be good for a laugh, although not nearly as much fun as actually fighting him. 

"Contestants ready! And . . . begin!" 

Red pulled his sword from its backscabbard and swept it down in a single, smooth, blurringly fast motion. I could see the distortion of the shockwave as it hit the man with the whips, knocking him right out of the white-painted square. Red stepped forward and held the point of his blade to the other man's throat, producing an instant (if unnecessary) surrender. 

It took a moment for one of the officials to unfreeze and step forward to declare Red the winner. The fight might have taken all of fifteen seconds. 

Red raised his sword and leaned the flat against his shoulder instead of putting it back into the scabbard. Then he turned and gave me a smirk and a wink. _I knew you were watching,_ I translated as he strolled toward me where I stood in the half-walled fighters' waiting area at the edge of the sands. 

"Any bets on who's going to take third place?" he asked as he came to a stop beside me. 

"I'd like to see everyone fight before I even try to decide that," I said, nodding toward the woman and the greenish-skinned man (likely a half-troll) who had also sat this round out. 

"You two must have balls the size of dragon eggs," the half-troll grumbled. 

I snorted. "There speaks someone who's never seen a dragon egg." 

"And I suppose you have?" 

"Once." Actually, it had been not the egg itself, but the egg cozy Aunt Filia had made to throw over unhatched-me in the winter months, except that I hadn't stayed in the egg long enough to need it. "And if I had balls that size, I wouldn't be able to stand up without keeping my knees bent at a right angle." 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Red smile with genuine amusement, subtly different from what I was coming to think of as his usual smirk. He really was easy to read, or at least I found him so. 

The second round of fighting put Red up against Changoro the half-troll and paired me with a hard-faced female mercenary wielding dual short swords who had won her first round. Her basic tactic was to entrap her opponent's sword with her right-hand blade while she stepped in and gutted him with the left-hand one, but it didn't work that well against a double-ended lance. Keeping the secondary blade withdrawn, I poked her hard in the stomach with the non-pointy end, doubling her over despite her leather armour, then spun the lance to put the main blade against her neck. It wasn't quite as quick as Red's first-round bout, but quick enough. Not a real challenge. 

I rejoined the big man on the sidelines to wait for the end of the other bouts, and discovered, to my surprise, that he had a fresh scrape across one cheekbone. 

"Got careless," he explained when he noticed me staring. "I though it would take him longer to swing that mace of his, but that half-troll's fucking strong and knows how to use his weapon's momentum." 

I nodded, and we stood watching the others in companionable silence. Ardishey the morning-star-wielder made it through the second round, as did the mud-coloured wolfman. Rounding out the group of eight who would fight in the quarter-final were three assorted male humans with longswords and a cougar-woman with an axe. 

"We'll now take a quick break before we return for the first quarter-final match!" the announcer-official said, and there was some cheering from the stands, then the restless murmur of people getting up to stretch their legs or buy something from the vendors waiting in the lobby. 

I was surprised to see one of the officials approaching us. 

"You two," he said. "Val Ul Copt and . . . Red, was it? I need to have a word." 

I shrugged. "Why not," I said. 

"So talk," Red added. 

The official swallowed. "I hope you two aren't conspiring for one of you to throw the final match." 

Red smirked. "Now, where would be the fun in that?" 

"Why would we bother?" I added. "We just met in the waiting room, and hit it off—that would have made it kind of difficult to fix the betting in advance. Besides, I'm looking forward to taking down this wall of muscle a peg or two." 

"You wish," Red said, with a gravelly chuckle. "No, we both want this fight. You're at more risk of us taking it too seriously than of either of us throwing it." 

If anything, that made the official look more nervous, but he nodded anyway, bowed, and walked away. 

There was that lazy smirk of Red's again. "Wonder if he realized he just about admitted that they're rigging the draws?" 

"I give it about fifteen minutes before he makes an attempt to retroactively kick himself in the head," I said. "Unless we tell everyone. In which case he'll realize it that much sooner." 

"Why bother, when it sounds like they've rigged it in our favour?" 

I shrugged. "The woman who brought me up always used to make a big deal about honesty. I never really understood why." Especially not when Aunt Filia gave Xellos free run of the place. I doubted a more dishonest creature existed. 

"One of those do-gooders that think that some actions have value for their own sake, rather than as means to an end," Red rumbled. "I always thought it was fucking idiotic myself." 

I throttled back the desire to defend Aunt Filia—really, it was a reflex I could do without. "And she was lying to me all along," I said. "If she wanted me to share her beliefs, that wasn't the way to go about it." 

"Huh." The crowd cheered, and Red added, "Guess they're starting up again. Want to have a look at the fools we're going to beat the stuffing out of during the semifinals?" 

I gave him a toothy grin. "Why not?" 

The first quarterfinal was between two of the assorted male humans. They turned out to be pretty evenly matched, so the fight took a while, the two of them stamping back and forth in a space no larger than the original squares, although these matches weren't area-restricted anymore and had the full run of the arena. Finally, one of them put a foot wrong, and the other one swept in to take advantage. 

For the second match, Red drew the wolf-man, who made a stupid mistake almost instantly by letting Red lever his sword out of his hands and send it flying to the other end of the arena. The beastman ran for it, but Red, for all his size, was the quicker of the two. 

The third quarterfinal had Ardishey bash the stuffing out of the third nondescript longswordsman with his morning star. Somehow he managed not to break any bones or do any internal damage, but his opponent was going to be walking funny for a while, his body one solid bruise where it wasn't cut up from the spikes on the nasty weapon's business end. 

And then it was my turn. 

"Val Ul Copt and Girya Swiftfang!" 

I glanced at the cougar-woman as she shouldered her axe and moved out into the arena, and knew that this wasn't going to be as easy as the last round. So after unhooding the main blade of my lance, I clicked the secondary out for the first time today. Then I followed her out onto the sands. 

I was going to have to be careful with this one. The shaft of my lance was wooden, after all, which made the axe its natural enemy. But that was just going to make this more fun. 

"Ready . . . Fight!" 

Girya began the battle by jumping into the air and swinging her axe down at me with a shout, using the drop to give the swing extra force. I only had time to block, not dodge—feline beast-people were almost as fast as dragons—and my palms stung as I absorbed the blow on my lance's main blade. 

I spun left, but the cougar-woman moved with me. Her bare, clawed feet found easier purchase in the sand than my booted ones did, from the look of it. Well, if I couldn't beat her on speed, I'd just have to do so on strength and skill. 

Two quick backflips put some distance between us. Then I charged straight at her, holding my lance at an aggressive angle. 

She dodged . . . which was exactly what I'd been expecting. Quickly, I dug the second blade of my lance into the sand and used it to redirect my momentum. As I swung around, my left hand shot out to grab Girya's tail and gave it a good hard yank. 

She squalled and swung at me, but she was off-balance, and a hard kick to her leg just added to that. She ended up on one knee, and I brought the main blade of my lance against the side of her neck before she could recover. 

"Well?" I asked with a grin. It hadn't been a bad fight. 

She dropped and rolled away, throwing her axe at me. I hadn't been expecting the move, and cursed softly as I dodged the heavy weapon—not that that was difficult, but it kept me distracted for the moment she needed to jump at me again with her claws outstretched. 

I pivoted so that my side and shoulder were facing her instead of my vulnerable front. Claws gouged my upper arm—it was one of the few times in my life I'd wished I was in the habit of wearing armour. What bothered me more than the scratches, though, was the fact that I'd almost reflexively skewered her and disqualified myself from the tournament. I'd thought I had more control than that. 

Well, it was time to put an end to this. I insinuated one hand between us, braced it against her sternum, and shoved, applying my full strength for the first time during the fight. Girya made a sound that was half caterwaul and half curse as she fell, bounced, and skidded halfway across the arena. 

This time, I put my foot on her chest, between her small, pert breasts, to reduce the likelihood of escape before I held the blade to her throat. 

She glared daggers at me before growling out, "I yield!" loudly enough to be heard by the officials. 

The crowd cheered, and I held up my lance in salute and acknowledgment. Then I took my foot off Girya's chest and offered her my hand to help her up. She'd been a worthy opponent, so I figured she deserved the courtesy. The cougar-woman ignored it and rose in a single fluid, feline motion. 

"I'd ask what in hell you are, but you wouldn't tell me anyway," she muttered, barely loud enough for me to hear, before striding off across the sand to retrieve her axe. 

I shrugged and headed back to the fighters' waiting area. The announcer had just called another brief intermission, so I sat down on a bench beside Red, cupped my hand over the gouges Girya had left in my arm, focused my will, and said, " _Recovery!_ " 

It wasn't a serious wound, so the accelerated healing only tired me a bit, but Red jerked as though it startled him. Ardishey, several feet away, watched us with a wooden expression, and the swordsman who had won the first quarter-final bout eyed everyone nervously. 

"What's your bet that whoever draws him can get him to concede by just looking at him funny?" I asked Red, nodding in the direction of the nameless swordsman. 

"No bet. Stupid fucker's out of his league and knows it. I wouldn't be surprised if he pisses his pants." 

"Neither would I, actually." 

"Notice something else?" Red asked. 

I blinked at him. "Like what?" 

"We've already established that they're rigging the draws. That means they've been putting us up against the non-humans on purpose." 

"The obvious non-humans, you mean," I said, and Red's expression became unreadable—was he surprised I'd found him out, or just that I'd acknowledged our mutual status? "I take it you think there's a reason." 

He snorted. "Probably just garden-variety prejudice. They want to get rid of them as quickly as possible so that beast-men don't gain any status here. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though." 

"Mine too," I admitted. "It's almost tempting to trash the town on the way out." 

Red vented another of those rumbling chuckles of his. "I really do like how you think. I doubt it would help much, though. Confirmation bias: anything nasty done by non-humans proves that all non-humans are evil, but anything nasty done by humans or apparent humans just proves that those _particular_ humans are evil. This lot are too fucking stupid for us to be able to convince them of anything else." 

_And you're a lot smarter than you look,_ I thought. 

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it's now time for our first semifinal match! Ardishey Fizzbar and Val Ul Copt, please come forward!" 

"Not going to wish me luck?" I asked. 

Red snorted. "Like you need it. Go get this over with." 

Odd, how we'd fallen so quickly into a pattern of bantering like old friends. Odd, but comfortable. I decided I liked it. 

Ardishey took up a stance near the middle of the arena. His expression didn't change as he swung his morning star idly back and forth, the spiked ball describing an arc at the end of its chain. I was going to have to keep him at a distance if I didn't want that chain lashing out and wrapping around the shaft of my lance. 

Even his eyes didn't move, I noticed. I was starting to wonder if the man had some strange condition that paralyzed the nerves of his face. Well, it wasn't like it mattered all that much. Judging from his previous matches, there was nothing wrong with his peripheral vision, so even if his eyes were stuck pointing straight ahead, it wasn't a significant advantage. 

"Ready . . ." 

I raised my lance to the guard position, and Ardishey began to swing his morning star more rapidly, creating a circular blur. 

"Fight!" 

We circled each other, footsteps crunching against the sand, Ardishey's morning star humming as it spun rapidly, while the crowd held its collective breath. I didn't want to be the first to step in for an attack—I wanted that ball-and-chain already in motion in a specific direction before I tried to close, so that I could dodge more effectively. 

Ardishey either got bored quickly or just didn't think I was much of an opponent, because he stepped in and swung his weapon long before I was feeling any pressure at all. I moved in the direction opposite his blow and slammed the flat of my lance's blade against his arm. He had to shift to regain his balance, but otherwise he didn't react. 

_Shit._ This was going to be more difficult than I'd expected. In a real fight I would have backed off at that point and fireballed him in the face, but I didn't have that option here. _Work with what you have on hand,_ I told myself. It had been a favourite catchphrase of the ex-adventurer who had taught me spear-fighting when I'd been in the town militia. 

So what did I have? I was confined to the arena. Magic was against the rules, and I was pretty sure that returning to my true form now would be considered cheating. I had my lance and my skills in using it, the clothes on my back, the exceptional strength, speed, and sharp senses of my dragon nature, and a lot of sand. 

Sand . . . 

I felt my mouth stretch into a fairly good imitation of Red's smirk as I subtly shifted my grip on my lance. If sand was what I had, then sand was what I'd use. 

The next time Ardishey swung at me, instead of aiming a blunt attack at him, I skimmed my lance's main blade along the surface of the ground and threw the sand it picked up straight in his eyes. 

It should have blinded him. 

Should have. 

Ardishey didn't even blink. 

Which meant that something was profoundly wrong with him. 

I'd seen him blink before . . . hadn't I? It's one of those things you really don't notice much, but a living creature that didn't blink would soon find its eyeballs drying out. 

Which meant that either whatever condition had locked up Ardishey's facial muscles also kept him from feeling the sting of the sand (which might mean that he felt no pain at all anywhere and put me at a severe disadvantage), or he didn't have a living physical body. A golem wouldn't need to blink. Neither would a Mazoku. 

I dropped to avoid the spiked ball swinging at my head, rolled, and came up again, stabbing with my lance . . . but this time I didn't make any effort to hit with the flat. 

I ignored the collective gasp from the crowd as the point of my lance struck Ardishey's arm with a hollow-sounding _thwock_ and sank in a couple of inches. Whatever I'd hit was much harder than flesh, and there was no blood as I pulled my weapon back, just a dry gouge. _Golem._ Was that a violation of the rules or not? I had to admit I hadn't read all the fine print. Still, a golem wasn't alive in the first place, so destroying it wouldn't technically be killing anything, and Ardishey wasn't large enough to contain an operator—he was either running a program, or being controlled at a distance. Given that his reactions thus far had been human-like enough to pass, I suspected the latter. 

For the time being, I pretended I hadn't noticed anything, and raised my lance, leaving an inviting gap in my defenses below knee level. 

Ardishey, or his controller, took the bait and sent the morning star hissing out mere inches above the sand. 

I jumped, more forward than up, and landed on the chain of the morning star. It was a move that took exquisite timing and accuracy . . . and a dragon's more-than-human weight. Ardishey yanked at his weapon, but it was firmly pinned. 

I spun my lance end over end and brought the business end down on the golem-man's head with my full draconic strength. 

_Thwock-crack!_

Ardishey's head split open along the seam that had been disguised as a facial scar. The two parts bounced off his shoulders and landed on the ground, and the neck opening left behind released a gout of steam . . . no . . . frost? Something white and cold, anyway. I narrowed my eyes. There was something inside there, a shadow inside the white . . . 

" _Howl Freeze!_ " 

_Shit!_ Whatever the thing inside the mist was, it knew some nasty spells. Midsummer became winter all around me instantly, driving snow stinging at my face and every other exposed skin surface. Squinting, I tried to take another swing at the Ardishey-golem, but I couldn't _see_ anything more than a foot in front of me. 

"Holy wind which flows gently across the land—" 

" _Flare Arrow!_ " I didn't take the time to cast the spell properly, just ran the chant through my mind, snarled the Power Words, and sent several spears of light and heat out at random. They disappeared into the mist, and I heard the sound of them hitting . . . something. Apparently not the golem, though, because the squeaky voice continued to chant as though I'd never interrupted. 

"—let all things be filled with your pure breath: _Van Rail!_ " 

"Like hell!" 

A shadow loomed out of the whiteness. Red waved a red-glowing hand in front of himself, and there were a series of pops and pings culminating in a shattering sound and the flare of some sort of magic shield. A flickering ball of red and gold appeared against his palm, and the ice encasing my legs began to melt. 

"What the hell was that lame-ass production?" Red asked, glaring at me.


	7. "Red"

Val smiled ruefully. "It took me by surprise. Lack of experience, I suppose." 

"Huh." It wasn't like I could claim massive amounts of experience myself—in fact, I probably had less idea of what I was doing than Val did. Take the flickering energy gathered in the palm of my left hand, for instance. I had no idea what it was (beyond "magical"), where it had come from, or why it had responded to my will. Like my sword, it felt entirely natural, an extension of myself. As though I'd had this ability forever. 

This whole amnesia thing was really starting to piss me off. There were so many whys that I didn't have the answers to, like why I found Val so fascinating. At first glance, he didn't look like anything more than a promising young fighter, but there was something about him, a weight and a solidity that I had yet to sense from anyone else here. And he really did smell amazing—not like a sweaty human, but of something else entirely, something musky and enticing that teased at some other incomprehensible part of my closed-off psyche. 

I flexed my left hand and sent a wave of heat spiraling out from us, turning the driving snow to cold rain. Behind me, Val muttered a curse and pounded his thighs with his fists—they were partially de-iced now, so I assumed he was trying to get some feeling back into them—but I was staring ahead into the falling water, searching for a shadow . . . which . . . was . . . _there!_

I drew my sword and swung. There was a _thunk_ and a loud squeal, and the cold rain stopped abruptly. 

When I pulled my weapon back, there was something holding on to the end. It was white, about the size of a large squirrel, and it had a bunch of very small horns sticking out of its head, three bright blue eyes, and a tail that looked kind of like a tuft of peacock feathers in white, pale blue, and lavender. 

Val stopped pounding his legs for a moment, and blinked. "A rime devil? This far south?" 

"I don't have a right to be here?" the creature squeaked. "All you warm-bloods are the same." 

Rime devils, my unhelpful memory told me, were monsters that lived in the very far north. They could cast ice-oriented water shamanistic spells with great force and expertise, but were pretty much useless at any other kind of magic. They also didn't live for very long if exposed to what humans thought of as room temperature. 

"Any last words?" I asked. 

The rime devil's fur stood on end. "They won't be last words if I could just cast Gray Buster without you incinerating me, you fire-loving monstrosity." 

"I have a better idea," said Val. "Just hope I remember this one right . . ." 

The rime devil hissed and tried to run for it, but I grabbed it by the scruff of its neck as Val subvocalized some spell or other, then pointed at it. 

" _Ru Freeze!_ " 

The creature's three eyes went wide, then it relaxed a fraction. "Thanks, man—that's _much_ better than a Gray Buster! Why didn't I know that one? Would you teach me?" 

"I don't think it would do you much good," Val said. "I was told that it only works on things significantly smaller than the caster. Besides, why would I teach you anything? You tried to kill me." 

"Only after you tried to kill me!" 

"Kill your golem, you mean." 

"Think there's a market for the skins of these things?" I asked Val. The rime devil squealed and jerked against my grip, but I wasn't about to let it go. 

"I'm sure a dealer in exotic items would be interested even if a furrier wouldn't. The Ru Freeze should preserve the pelt quite nicely," Val added with a toothy grin. 

I shook the rime devil a little—just enough to make its teeth rattle and make it clear I meant business. "Now, you mind telling us what you're doing here, or should I start skinning?" 

It didn't take thirty seconds for me to become sorry that I'd asked. "I needed a place to make my mark. You warm-bloods think so little of us that most of you don't even remember we exist! Well, we're more than just a bunch of drawings in a book about exotic monsters! We're _people_ , and we deserve equal rights!" 

I shook it again to shut it up. Its shrill, angry indignity would be bitter and sharp-tasting, like the kinds of salad greens that people keep saying are good for you even as they look for excuses not to have to eat them. 

I blinked. _The hell? That was random._

In the meanwhile, Val was examining the golem. "This is magic-driven," he said, pulling his head out of the neck cavity. "I'd say that's a pretty clear violation of the rules. Disqualify that thing so that we can get on with this, would you?" That last was directed at the nearest official, who was staring at the whole mess and wringing his hands. 

"You don't think we can continue the tournament after _this_ , surely," the stupid lunk said. "Not with the arena in this state!" 

"It doesn't look so bad to me," I said, and really, it didn't. Okay, so there were sections of sand that had been turned to glass by the Flare Arrow Val had thrown at random, but they could be gotten rid of easily enough. Some of the ground was still frozen, too, but it would thaw. And they could just rope off the partially-collapsed section of the stands. 

"Why not continue?" Val said. "It isn't like you haven't already collected all the ticket payments . . . or are you trying to cheat us out of our prizes?" 

The official went white. "No! No, of course not! Um . . . Since you are the only two remaining semifinal participants, the others having been disqualified or fled, I declare you, Red and Val Ul Copt, joint winners of the two hundred twenty-seventh Aquen Midsummer Combat Tournament! The prize money for all places will be awarded jointly to you both!" He signaled another official, who ducked briefly into a tunnel under the stands and reappeared carrying four purses. "You-can-decide-for-yourselves-who-gets-what-and-I'm-out-of-here!" 

I threw the rime devil at him. _Good riddance to them both._

Val had moved over to the stack of leather purses that the other official had dropped on the ground. "Five thousand for first place, twenty-five hundred for second, and twelve-fifty for each of the other semifinalists," he said. "So these three should be equal to this one." 

He threw the largest of the purses at me. I caught it one-handed and tucked it inside my shredded clothes. 

"Val-sama!" 

The two beast-men I'd seen with Val the previous day—this close, it was obvious that the big one was some kind of lizard-troll cross—vaulted down from the stands. All the other spectators seemed to have left, except for a few stragglers near the exits and a certain mage with a monocle, a green robe, and unruly dark brown hair. 

"Know any good restaurants in this stupid town?" I asked Val, who grinned. 

"We'll find one. I'm buying, though—you probably saved my life back there." 

"You would have figured something out." Why was I so confident in that? Val was barely more than a boy . . . and yet . . . 

I ended up with Val, Taben, and the two beastmen following me around in a lump. They didn't even seem to be bothered when they realized our first destination was a tailor's. And after a bit of poking around and following directions, wonder of wonders, we actually found one with premade clothes big enough to fit me. Sort of. 

"You normally offer your clients stuff with ripped seams in back?" I asked as I emerged from the dressing room—I wanted a change of trousers too, but the ones I'd just tried had a gap in the rear seam below the waistband. 

"I'll sew it up, of course—it's just that most of my beastman clients require an affordance for their tails," the tailor, who was tall and thin and moustached, explained. "In fact, if you wish to take them, I'll perform the adjustment immediately." 

"Do that." I refused to be humiliated by the fact that there weren't any made-for-humans clothes around large enough to fit me. It wasn't my fault everyone in this stupid city was ridiculously short and skinny. 

That got me one pair of black trousers and one shocking pink and one lime green shirt, since whatever premade ones the idiot tailor had had in sane colours had already been sold. He hadn't had anything to replace my coat—beastmen didn't require much insulation—so I was going to have to try to get the existing one repaired. Or give up and just wear it in tatters. At least it drew attention away from the colour of the shirts. 

Then I hit up several shops for the basic traveler's kit I'd been missing—and had missed—while we'd been on our way to Aquen. A couple of blankets, cooking and eating utensils, emergency food, a waterskin and a length of rope. A proper hairbrush, so that I wouldn't have to work with the broken comb I'd taken off that bandit anymore. That kind of thing. Val bought a couple of things too, his choices implying that he wanted to top up some cache of existing supplies. Taben bought some food, but then we'd been digging into his emergency supplies for a while now. The two beastmen just followed the rest of us around, with the big one acting as a convenient pack mule. He even took my and Taben's packages, when Val told him to. 

Taben was the one who thought to ask the shopkeepers about restaurants, and as the afternoon began to slide down toward evening, we found ourselves at what was supposed to be one of the better ones in town, shortly before the dinner rush. The waiters even went so far as to find a private room for us—I think they thought we would lower the tone of the place if the other customers could see us, or some shit like that. They were quite happy to have us order a whole roast baby kraken with all the trimmings, though. 

"Where are you headed from here?" I asked Val as I cut myself a fresh tentacle and spooned some sauce over it. 

"Seyruun. I'm hoping that someone there knows the answer to some personal questions of mine." 

I shot Taben a sidelong glance. Well, I'd never actually _promised_ to go to New Sairaag with him. If I wanted to, I could just pay him back for the food and the inn rooms we'd shared up to this point, find him a boat up the coast so that he wouldn't get tangled up with any more bandits, and probably never see him again. I might never find out what it was about the deaf mage that niggled at me so much if I did that, but Val . . . felt more interesting, I guess. 

"Val-sama is going to visit Princess Amelia," the little fox beastman added. He looked significantly older than his master, with grey hairs starting to appear on his muzzle. I was willing to bet that the other one, the reptilian who called himself Gravos, was of similar age, although he showed it less. 

"So how did you come to know the princess?" Taben asked. 

Val scowled. "My fos—the woman who raised me has known her since before I was h—born. I think the last time I saw her was when we were invited to the princess' wedding when I was three." 

_Questions about some kind of family secret, then—something his foster-mother refuses to explain._ That was clear enough. What I was curious about was the second, almost inaudible, hiccup in his speech. What word had he been meaning to use instead of "born"? 

"How did you and Red happen to meet, anyway? You don't seem the most likely of traveling companions." The question was aimed at Taben, but Val was watching me, so I decided to answer him. 

"I scraped some bandits off him, and he's been following me around ever since." 

Taben snorted. "You mean you've been sponging off me because you were broke." 

"Broke? Really?" Val did sound surprised. "I would have expected a dragon of your power to have accumulated enough wealth not to have to worry about things like that." 

_Dragon?_

Why would he . . . ? 

"What makes you think I'm a dragon?" I asked, pretending to only be slightly surprised, rather than extremely confused. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't think—was it supposed to be a secret?" 

"Answer the fucking _question_ , Val," I growled. 

The young man held up several fingers. "One, a human's astral body is about the same size as his or her physical body, but yours is big enough that most of it can't even fit in the room with us. So even if your imposture is really good, you can't be human." That was the index finger. He moved on to the middle finger. "Two, you got banged around in the tournament and you bleed red, so you have an actual physical body and not just a solid astral projection. Which means you're not a Mazoku." Ring finger. "Three, you _look_ human, and it isn't just an illusion either, which eliminates any type of monster with a large astral presence, as well as most types of chimera." Little finger. "Four, while you were messing around trying to get a shirt in some sane colour, I was able to shift myself into a partial trance. I wasn't able to get a good sense of your overall shape on the astral—you're _really_ big—but you have a typical draconic pattern of concentrated astral loci in your physical body: head, like every thinking being, but also concentrations at the bases of your wings and tail, and a breath weapon locus nearly the size of one of these plates inside your chest behind the sternum. So either you're a dragon, or you're a chimera who was deliberately designed to look human on the physical plane and draconic on the astral, and I don't see why anyone would bother. Plus, you, um, _smell_ like a dragon." 

_Dragon,_ I repeated inside my head. And when I tried to imagine myself with wings and a tail and breathing something extremely destructive, the idea clicked into place and flooded my mind with phantom sensations . . . with _memories_ , shadowy and thin as smoke, but definitely real. 

"I assume you're a dimos dragon," Val added. "With whites and goldens, their hair always reflects their true nature. And I've never heard of a black dragon who was smart enough to master shapeshifting magic." 

"You already suspected me before we got to the tailor's shop," I said. 

Val nodded. "I felt your astral presence the moment I entered that waiting room. I'm surprised that you didn't feel me." 

Was that what I'd been sensing? I'd thought Val's presence had a weight to it—had that been a filtered perception of his astral self? 

"You haven't exactly gone out of your way to explain what you are, either," I said. _Never show ignorance, for ignorance is weakness. Probe for information at any opportunity._ I'd had to override those rules a bit too often for my comfort lately, and I wasn't ready to do it again, not yet. 

Val considered me for a moment. " . . . All right." He put his knife and fork carefully aside. 

"Boss . . ." The little fox-man looked as though he was going to cry. "You know Filia-sama doesn't like you to—" 

"I don't give a damn what that bitch thinks!" Val snapped. Then he took a deep breath. "It'll be fine, Jillas. I'm certain— _certain_ —that these people are safe. And if by some trick of Ruby-Eye's it turns out that they aren't, I think I can handle one dimos dragon, however skilled in the arts of war." 

He smiled crookedly and laid his right arm on the table, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 

The transformation began at his fingertips and rolled up his arm. Soft-skinned human fingers darkened and grew, becoming a huge, taloned hand covered with leaf-shaped black scales. 

"An ancient dragon," I said as the change halted just above his elbow, although my memory was silent when it came to how, exactly, you distinguished between ancient and black dragons. "Funny—I thought you were extinct." 

"I'm told that I'm the last one," Val said, allowing his human shape to reassert itself and picking up his utensils again. 

"I've never even heard of ancient dragons before," Taben said. 

I snorted. "I'm not surprised. They didn't mix with the other dragon races, and then some of the goldens got ticked off at them for not offering all the support they could to the fight against the Mazoku and exterminated them down to the last egg about eight, nine hundred years ago."


	8. Val

I froze in the act of reaching for the salt. My wings broke the skin and stretched the back of my shirt before I managed to gather them back in again. 

_The golden dragons slaughtered my people._

It went completely against everything I had ever been taught . . . or did it? No one had ever said much of anything beyond, _they died in the war_. Or had that been, _because of the war_? The second of those, I realized with a chill, could be twisted around to match what Red had just said. 

Could he be lying? 

Well, it technically wasn't impossible, but it didn't seem likely. Why drop such a devastating lie in my lap without even _looking_ at me while he was doing it? And in such an absent tone of voice, as though he'd expected me to _know_? 

I'd been holding my fork in my other hand. It fell to my plate with a clatter as the other shoe dropped inside my head. 

_The dream—the recurring nightmare I've been having all my life—is real._ Dragons killing dragons. Logically, they couldn't be _my_ memories, but . . . maybe something racial? Was I dreaming my father's life? My mother's? I knew so little about my own race and what set them apart from other dragons—was this part of it? 

"Val-sama? Are you okay?" 

"Oh, for . . . What the fuck's gotten into you this time?" 

Oddly enough, it was Red's voice that pulled me back, where Gravos' hadn't made much of an impression. I took a deep breath. "I'm fine. It's just . . . I was raised by a golden dragon. And she never told me. She also never let anyone else tell me—she just let it be implied that they'd gotten slaughtered at the hands of Mazoku. My people." 

_I wonder—did Aunt Filia kill my parents?_

That was like another slug in the gut. I think I might have lost myself if my eyes hadn't already been locked with the big dimos dragon's ocean blue ones. He was staring at me fiercely, as though willing me not to sink down into myself. 

"I think I need a little while to get used to the idea," I said. "That's all." 

"'Ul Copt'," Red said. "Well, she might have been involved. No way to tell without asking." 

Dimos dragons weren't supposed to be able to read minds—or at least, not that I knew of. "Who the hell _are_ you, anyway?" 

Red hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know. The day before I scraped those bandits off that idiot—" He nodded in Taben's direction. "—I woke up lying in a ravine at the ass-end of nowhere, and that's where my memory begins. I don't know my own name, or where I came from before that, but I think what you said about me is probably right. It _feels_ right." 

It was a distraction, and I jumped at it. "You haven't transformed? A lot of dragons have one part or the other pop out involuntarily when they're under stress." 

"Like your little demonstration a moment ago? No, but I don't think I've had anything happen to me that would affect me to that degree." 

"Screaming at me to 'get the fuck out' of a burning building doesn't constitute some level of stress?" Taben wondered aloud. 

"Not really, no. Being concerned for your meal ticket isn't _personal_ , mage." 

"Depending on how you ended up . . . where you ended up, your transformation ability may have been sealed," I said slowly. 

"Hmph." Red's eyes narrowed. "If someone was trying to seal my power, they did a crappy job. Unless they were interrupted or I escaped." He stared at his left hand for a moment, and I remembered the power he'd wielded with it during our little spat with the rime devil—as did everyone else in the room, I expect. "Or they expected me to die and thought a human corpse would be tidier than ten tons of rotting dragon," he added. Then he returned his attention to me. "Do you know of any dimos dragons closer to here than the Kataart Mountains?" 

"Besides you? No. But I grew up outside what used to be the Barrier Lands, so what I know about the area inside is second-hand and out-of-date," I admitted. 

"Then it looks like I'm heading north. Sorry, mage." 

Taben shrugged. "Well, it isn't like I really _have_ to go to New Sairaag right away," he said. "There's no one waiting for me there. Seyruun, then Ralteague and into the Kataarts through Dils, then back along the north coast toward Sairaag works just as well." 

"It looks like we're all leaving together, then," Red said. "But first, we should eat the rest of this before it gets cold." 

And so we all helped ourselves to more. It really was very good kraken. 

Jillas had secured the three of us a room near the edge of the town proper by calling in some old favours I didn't think I wanted to ask about, since they probably had to do with things blowing up. It was a dirt-floored shed rather than anywhere people would normally have lived, but still more comfortable than sleeping in the open, and I offered our new friends some space when I heard they'd been camping under a tree. So we all crowded in—there was barely enough space, but Red didn't seem to mind sleeping sitting up. 

I curled up under my blankets and listened to the sounds of four various snores—Jillas' whistle and Gravos' snuffling grunt joined by a rhythmic snort and a low, almost subsonic growl—but I wasn't in the least drowsy. I was pretty sure my chances of getting any decent, non-nightmare-riddled sleep tonight were on a par with the likelihood of my ever meeting another living ancient dragon. 

I didn't want to think about me, so I settled my attention on Red and his predicament. He had to be a very old dragon, a very strong one. Granted, he didn't _look_ all that old, but dragon aging owed as much to willpower and self-image as it did to the physical qualities of our bodies. I hadn't wanted to stand out, so I'd reached maturity at roughly the same speed as the humans around me, and I'd probably plateau for a while now. Red might have had his present appearance for thousands of years. 

It had to have taken a lot of work and a lot of power to catch him and bind him, and I could only think of two reasons why anyone would have considered it worth the effort. 

First and most obvious: maybe Red was a criminal, an immediate danger to others. I didn't know whether dimos dragons used exile as a punishment or not. But if that were the case, erasing his memory seemed like an odd thing to do—what was the point of punishing a criminal who didn't know he was being punished? 

Second, and more likely: dragon politics. Which could get immensely long-term and murky, second only to those of the Mazoku. Red could have been someone important among the dimos dragons. Not only was he strong, but there was something about him that made him feel to me like he was capable of leadership. He could easily have enemies who wanted him out of the way without killing him, for reasons ranging from the petty to the nasty. But imprisoning him would have been difficult. Spiking his beer with dragonsbane liqueur, casting some blockage spells on him, and dumping him by the side of the road in an unfamiliar region would keep him out of the way, at least for a time. 

I scrubbed my hands through my hair, fingers tangling in the long strands. That didn't answer the most important question about Red: why did I like him? I didn't even know how to describe the connection that had formed between us. It was as though there had been a hole in my life ever since I was hatched, one that I hadn't even realized was there until he'd just . . . stepped into it. His foul-mouthed rough cameraderie and commanding attitude were weirdly soothing. 

He seemed to feel some connection to me, too, although that might be because I was the only other dragon he currently knew. 

Were his scales as red as his hair? In my mind's eye they were exactly the colour of freshly-spilled blood. He would be a big dragon. A very big dragon, just as he was a big human. 

I shook my head slightly, remembering what he looked like when he'd finally taken off that horrible shredded coat of his so that he could try things on in the tailor's shop. The man had a stunning physique, well-developed, solid muscles without an ounce of fat. And he was incredibly fast—not just for his size, but in absolute terms. The consummate warrior. I wondered how long and how hard he had trained to become that way. "Thousands of years" seemed like a probable answer. 

We were going to have to see if we could recover his true form. For his sake, I told myself, not just because I wanted to see it. 

I must have drifted off eventually in spite of myself, because after a familiar sequence of hiding and biting and being flung and flying and falling and trudging through the desert, I found myself standing in darkness with a larger, taller body pressed against my back, big hands resting on my shoulders. 

"Are you sure you want to do this?" 

"I'm sure," I said firmly. "It was my idea, remember?" 

"Still . . ." 

"This isn't like you," I said, not quite teasing. We'd known each other for centuries now, and I thought I'd seen him in all possible moods, but this was the first time I'd ever known him to be reluctant. Or stall. 

His hands slid down my chest—he was _embracing_ me. Another thing that had never happened before. 

"I took you in because it appealed to my sense of irony, and because I knew you would be a strong ally," he said. "I never expected . . ." 

"You don't have to say it. I understand." After all, weren't we the same? Both twisted by misadventure into creatures that could never again be what we had been born to be, rejected by those who should have been our comrades? 

"Even if this works as designed, the results could endanger you." 

"Do you think I'd object to rejoining the Sea of Chaos a bit sooner, under the circumstances?" I'd thought I'd already made it clear that I was willing to die for him. And he would complete my vengeance for me even if I weren't still here. He'd already said so in as many words. 

His arms tightened around me for a moment . . . but then he let me go. "You know what? Fuck this. Bad enough that I have to make a fucking contingency plan for my own destruction. I'm not going to go into it bawling like some stupid human brat who's just lost his favourite toy. Let's do this." 

I felt him flex his will, and the lights in the room came on dimly, enough to reveal the intricate magic circle drawn on the floor, and the cushion-strewn mattress in the center. 

Then the scene was torn away, and I suffered through that time in the cave again, cursing the nameless sorceress until I woke to the sounds of four people snoring. 

_Well, that was . . . different._ This was the first new scene that had added itself to the nightmare in . . . eight years? The last one had been the shared-bed scene, which had come right around the time I'd hit puberty. 

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to reconstruct what I'd just experienced. The magic circle, for instance. Without opening my eyes, I traced runes in the air. 

" _—re in aeternae,_ " I muttered after I'd run through a couple of possibilities. That had been the portion of the inner ring nearest me. The outer one had been more complicated, with smaller circles, probably the name-sigils of individual spirits, inset. I was pretty sure I remembered the runic for _power_ being part of the mess, but the remainder was anyone's guess. And the bedding at the center was inexplicable . . . unless . . . it couldn't have been " _ama_ re in aeternae", could it? "Eternal love"? I didn't know the actual ceremony for creating a mate-bond between two dragons, but I did know that it _was_ a ceremony in the truest sense of the word, a magic spell that required the participants to . . . consummate their relationship in the middle of . . . I could feel my face heating up. 

I'd been dreaming of permanently linking myself to a life-partner, and that prospective partner had been . . . I cringed, but there was no denying it. Big hands, that deep voice, and the foul-mouthed comment at the end . . . the combination fit only one person that I knew. _Red_. 

I covered my mouth with one hand to smother a hysterical laugh. It was either that or scream. True, it _had_ been a dream, and my subconscious might have been overlaying Red's image on . . . someone else . . . but really, that made it worse instead of better, because it meant that somewhere down deep inside, what I wanted more than anything was a . . . a male dimos dragon significantly older than I was, impressive but not exactly handsome, with the rough-edged manner of a mercenary soldier or a bandit. I'd seemed immune to crushes all through my adolescence, but how could I possibly have been saving myself for _him_? 

And _mating_ with him . . . most dragons settled for a normal marriage, one that allowed for divorce. Mating was a permanent magical link. It had never been common. Why had dream-me even considered it as an option? 

_This isn't what I want . . . is it?_

I forced myself to imagine what it would be like to have Red as a lover. Given how much he seemed to enjoy fighting, a lot of the sex would involve the two of us wrestling for dominance, because I wasn't going to just roll over and submit to him. He'd be possessive, but at the same time I had the odd feeling that he'd trust me absolutely. 

I shivered as I felt the phantom sensation of teeth closing on the nape of my neck—the most vulnerable part of a dragon's body, that only a parent or a sexual partner would ever be allowed to touch. Scales rubbing against scales, and the scent of an aroused male dragon's pheromones, musky and heady. Being pinned and mounted, wings spread, neck arched back, tail pushed to one side . . . Great Ceiphied, was I getting a boner? 

_I_ do _want this. And I don't want to want it._

_So I just won't tell him._

It was the easiest solution. Red didn't know I was attracted to him, and nothing he'd said or done since I'd met him even suggested that he thought about me in . . . a sexual way. We could be friends, comrades, and I could find someone else—a nice white dragon girl, maybe—and we'd both be happy. 

Wouldn't we?


	9. Taben

It was, I reflected, a bit humiliating to be departing the city-state of Aquen along the same road I'd entered it by, but at least I didn't need to support a seven-foot-tall cash-leech on this leg of the trip. Since we'd left the city proper, Red had been paying his own way. 

He really seemed to have hit it off with Val. The young dragon-man had been skittish on our first morning of travel, but he'd relaxed again when whatever horror he'd expected had failed to materialize, and was now walking beside Red in comfortable, companionable silence. 

It made me feel like a third wheel . . . but at least I had the fourth and fifth wheels to keep me company. Jillas didn't seem to quite know what to make of his boss's newfound comrade. He kept an eye on Red, watching him suspiciously whenever he could. 

Gravos seemed to approve of Val's friendship with Red, but then I'd come to the conclusion that Gravos didn't have very good instincts. 

I was still trying to integrate the knowledge that Red was apparently a _dragon_ with everything else I knew about the man. I just couldn't seem to get my brain around it. He _looked_ absolutely human, if . . . very large. But then Val looked human too, and I'd seen his hand change shape, exposed on the table in that restaurant. Shapeshifting spells were very advanced magic and required an inhumanly high bucket capacity. The only reasonable conclusion was that Val wasn't human, and therefore Red might not be either. 

Val's other spells seemed pretty conventional, though. At this point, I'd seen him cast Flare Arrow, Recovery, Lighting, and a few random white and shamanistic utility spells, and he used the same Power Words as a human being. Red, on the other hand . . . what I'd seen him do in the arena, casting powerful spells without speaking, _was_ theoretically possible, but when I'd tried to calculate the amount of power that would be involved in the silent casting of a barrier spell that could block a Van Rail, the answer had been enough to make my hair stand on end. I'd been taught at the Guild that only thinking the Power Words that set a spell in motion, instead of speaking them out loud, reduced its power by an order of magnitude, and they'd had us cast Lighting silently to prove it, too. 

The first few days of the trip were uneventful as we retraced my previous route past the point where I had first met Red . . . well, except for the night one of Jillas' bombs exploded unexpectedly and damaged the interior of the inn room he'd been sharing with Gravos. And even that was taken more-or-less in stride by Val, who rolled his eyes, shook his head, and paid the innkeeper for the damaged furniture as though this sort of thing had happened to him before. 

And so I was thinking more about what we would be ordering for supper rather than potential dangers as we entered the outskirts of the town of Chessen, just over the border between Aquen and Zoana, a couple of hours after lunch, and almost walked into Val's back when he stopped abruptly. 

"This far inland?" the young dragon said. 

I blinked. _What?_

Looking up, I realized that there was something very wrong. We were standing in the middle of a fountain square that doubled as an open-air marketplace, and everywhere, _everywhere_ , there were fish-people. Shopping. Manning the stalls. Splashing water from the fountain over their bodies. And none of them looked very happy. 

I was the only human in sight. 

"It wasn't like this when I passed through on the way south," I said, staring. "It had the normal mix of races then—humans, a few beastmen. Nothing like this." 

"Shit," Red said. "I should know what . . ." Then, "Don't eat or drink anything you find here. I can't remember why, but it's important." 

Gravos looked up from where he had been scooping water out of the fountain. His chin was wet. 

I groaned and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, my Ear had transcribed _fzztPop!_ , and there was a large, muscular fishman standing in Gravos' place. 

Val groaned, then took a deep breath. "I suppose I should have expected this. I just hope there's some way to fix it." 

I shrugged. "I'm not an expert on curses, but it seems to me that this one would have to be spread pretty thin in order to affect the entire town, right? So killing the caster or destroying the anchoring artefact should be enough to return everyone to normal." A strong curse could persist beyond the caster's death, or at least that was what they'd taught us in introductory courses at the Guild, but casting a strong curse on an entire town should require power on the level of one of those whose sigils graced the Planes Chart . . . and if one of _them_ was somehow responsible, Gravos would just have to resign himself to living out his days as a fish-person. 

Red was scowling. "Does the Sorcerer's Guild have a branch here?" 

"A minor one," I said—I'd checked on that on my previous visit, so that I could avoid the place. "Why?" 

"I need to borrow their library. I know there's some kind of creature that casts this particular curse—a lesser demon or very minor Mazoku—but I can't remember fuck-all about it other than that. Which means I need to jog my memory, and that's the only method that occurs to me." 

"They'll charge you through the nose for access," I warned. 

"If you've got a better idea of how to proceed, mage, now's the time to bring it up." 

I shook my head. "If it is a Mazoku I don't see what we can do about it, though." 

"Lesser Mazoku are vulnerable to astral shamanistic spells," Val said. "So if you don't know the incantation for Elmekia Lance already, now would be a good time to pick it up." 

I grimaced. "I do know it. Sort of." 

"He sucks at attack spells," Red said, and I flushed . . . but I couldn't really protest, because I knew he was right. 

"Now, now, Boss, it isn't really that bad," Jillas was saying over by the fountain. "Val-sama and Red-sama will find a way to fix this up, and until then . . . well, there's lots of water around, at least, so you won't dry out." 

"You're only saying that because you don't have a sudden craving for seaweed," Gravos grumbled. 

Val tossed Jillas a small, jingling leather bag—one of the prize purses he'd picked up at the arena, now three-quarters empty, although I thought he'd probably transferred the coin rather than spending all of it. "Go find us an inn," he told the fox-man. "And remember, don't eat or drink anything we didn't bring with us, unless you _want_ to develop a seaweed fixation." 

"Yes, Val-sama!" 

"Why does Jillas defer to Gravos, anyway?" I asked as the two beastmen headed off for the far side of the square, where an inn called the Carp and Chicken squatted. 

"I'm not quite sure," the young dragon said. "They've been like that ever since I can remember." 

"So you've known them for a long time." 

Val shrugged. "All my life. Hell, I think I have vague memories of them calling me 'Val-sama' when I was still in the egg. Gravos used to have to get me down from the upper shelves in the shop when I was two or three—I couldn't completely control my shifting back then, so my wings wouldn't always come out when I wanted them to." 

I blinked. "Two-year-old dragons can shapeshift?" 

"Two- _month_ -old dragons can shapeshift, if they're from one of the higher races," Val said. "It's instinctive." 

Red had a thoughtful frown on his face. Presumably, he had a dragon form too, one he couldn't remember ever having taken. 

Since the conversation seemed to have fallen into a natural lull, I said, "The Guild offices here are in a house on the west side of town," and led off in what I hoped was the right direction. 

The library fees at the Guild were the same as the ones at Vezendi, alas. In fact, I was pretty sure that the librarian here was even more rigid and grumpy than the one we'd had there. Maybe it came from having been turned into a fishman, or maybe he was like that all the time, because he didn't back down even when Red grabbed him by the top fin and hauled him partway across his desk. 

"One thousand for members of the public, two hundred for Guild members in good standing, and if you don't let me go, I'm doubling it." 

It took me a moment to figure out that the odd _trtrtr_ that my Ear was transcribing was the sound of Red grinding his teeth. He let go of the librarian abruptly, pushing him back across the desk. 

"You're lucky we don't have the time to waste on arguing with you," Red growled. "I'd like to get this cleared up by supper, so we can eat something other than fucking travel rations." He pulled out the heavy purse of gold he'd gotten from the arena and counted out twenty coins. _Bang!_ my Ear transcribed obligingly as he slapped the money down on the librarian's desk. 

The librarian counted the money too, taking his time. "A pleasure doing business with you," he said at last, giving Red a disturbing fishy smile and gesturing at the door directly behind him. "Please go on through. You may find things inside a bit . . . disrupted right now, though, given that we've got a bunch of people looking for cures for this stupid fish-curse." 

Red vanished through the door. Val shrugged out of his pack and leaned back against the wall with his lance propped beside him, evidently preparing for a long wait. The Sorcerer's Guild never provided any chairs outside the library—the librarian at Vezendi had claimed it was to discourage loitering, but personally I thought it was just for the sake of being a pain in the ass. _Damn, I'm starting to sound like Red,_ I thought, and almost laughed. 

"Is your friend always like that?" the librarian asked abruptly. 

"More or less," I said, with a grimace. "One of our traveling companions caught your fish-curse, so we won't be able to move on until it's fixed." 

"Hmph. And he thinks the three of _you_ can fix it before suppertime, when the rest of us have been working around the clock for nearly a week and still haven't managed to do anything?" 

"The fact that you haven't managed to do anything pretty much proves that you need a fresh perspective, doesn't it?" Val smirked, an expression uncannily similar to Red's. "We figure pounding the caster into a smear of astral particles should do the job." 

"We haven't been able to find out who the caster is, either," the librarian grumbled. Then, "Wait a minute— _astral_ particles? You think the caster is a non-physical entity?" He frowned deeply. "No wonder," he muttered, and made a gesture as though to run his hand through his hair, wincing as his fingers encountered his bruised and swollen top fin. "Well, if you do manage to take care of it, I'll refund the library admission fee." 

"I'm sure Red will be glad to hear that," I said. 

The room lapsed into uneasy silence. After a couple of minutes of that, I sat down on the floor beside Val and leaned back against the wall. I was hoping to doze off, but the bare boards underneath me weren't very comfortable and I wasn't that tired. I ended up running my inventory of spells through my mind instead, searching for anything besides Elmekia Lance that might be useful against a minor Mazoku. The results weren't encouraging. I'd never had much interest in combat spells—it had always seemed like the most boring branch of magic to me. Blowing things up was blowing things up, after all, regardless of whether you used fire or water or the power of the Mazoku to do it. Utility spells were more interesting. They could do a lot of _different_ things. 

I _did_ know one other spell that might be effective against a Mazoku, I realized with a jolt. Dark Claw was the weakest of the offensive black magic spells, and I'd chosen it when I'd been required to display mastery of one spell in that category to win my full Guild membership. I hadn't cast it since, or the summoning spell I'd also learned for the Guild exam. Casting black magic always gave me a headache, as though something inside me was swelling. I'd never told anyone, afraid of being told that it was just my imagination. And although I'd looked, I'd never found any indication that there was such a thing as a Mazoku allergy. I didn't want to be the world's first and only case of _anything_. Hearing voices was bad enough. 

The door behind the librarian's desk creaked open, interrupting my train of thought, and Red strode out. 

"Let's go," was all he said, but he wasn't scowling or glaring. I took that to mean that he'd found something. 

"Where are we headed?" Val asked, shouldering his pack and picking up his lance. 

"Town reservoir. I'll explain on the way." 

Outside, Red turned left along the street. 

"It's called a silooh," he said abruptly, after about a block. "A lesser demon, not a full Mazoku, so we don't need to do more than destroy its physical body. They usually possess fish. Technically they're Deep-Sea Dolphin's lackeys, but I doubt very much that she's going to give a fuck if we kill this one." 

"How well do they fight?" Val asked. 

Now Red did scowl. "They don't. The only spell they know is the fish-man curse. But there's no way to tell them apart from an _un_ possessed fish, even from the astral. Which means we need to kill every fucking fish in the reservoir, plus any in the aqueduct. _Without_ getting wet. Freezing it's probably the best way to go—easier than boiling that much water, anyway." 

"Sounds kind of anticlimactic," I said. 

"It is." _trtrtr_ , my Ear added. I could see Red's jaw working as his teeth ground together. "What's your best ice spell, mage?" 

"Pocket Arctic, if I can remember the whole thing." It took nearly five minutes to cast, so it was useless in combat. Its major application was creating big chunks of ice to use in refrigeration, or summer skating rinks for wealthy clients—that sort of thing. 

"Fine. You get the reservoir, then. Val and I will work our way back down the channel and do a little spear-fishing. If it's upriver from the reservoir, I don't know what the fuck we'll do, but I doubt it is—farms up that way apparently haven't been affected." Red shook his head. "They had a map up on the wall inside the library with the extent of the curse marked out, and _none_ of them managed to get it. I was just about tempted to grab one of them and shine a light through his ear to see if it came out the other side." 

"You're just unhappy that there isn't anything to slice apart or blow up," I said. 

"Offering yourself as a potential victim?" 

"N-no, I don't think I'd be very satisfactory." Or would I? Normally I would have said _no_ , but Red looked beyond grumpy right now. "I don't fight back enough." 

"Heh. You're getting the idea, mage." 

The reservoir was above the level of the town, set back among the hills. It was also smaller than I'd expected, Ragradia be thanked. I positioned myself as close to the middle of one side as I could manage. 

I flubbed the first casting—probably inevitable under the circumstances—but the second time, I made it to the end of the chant. Raising my hands so that the palms were facing the water, I yelled, "POCKET ARCTIC!" as loudly as I could manage, because the sound only acted on water within earshot. 

The cold spread out from me with a _crik-crik-crik_ noise, the water going white, solid, and opaque. It raced away as I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath. It had been a while since I'd last spent myself this way, throwing my entire pool into one spell. I hadn't liked it then, and I didn't like it now. Val and Red were moving off downstream as I panted and shook, knowing my hair had probably gone ice-white. 

Something hit me in the back. 

It took me a moment to figure out that that was what had happened. My body was so numb that at first I only noticed that the ground was a lot closer to my face than it had been—right at the end of my nose, in fact. A warm rivulet of something trickled over my skin. _Blood?_

"Red . . ." I meant to shout it, but I could tell from the transcription that I hadn't. 

Thankfully, it was enough. "What did you do to yourself _this_ time, you idiot mage?" Shadows above me. "Fuck, that's—" 

Something exploded, and the shot of adrenaline the vibration of the earth produced was enough for me to lever myself up on one elbow and blink dizzily as a bolt of blue energy shot in from somewhere outside the world. 

Red blocked it with his sword, deflecting it away to tear chunks of ice from the surface of the frozen reservoir. It shouldn't have worked, not with an ordinary sword . . . but then I'd never really examined that blade of his. Maybe there was more to it than just steel. Val, standing back-to-back with him, had his lance in his hands. 

"Show yourself, you bastard!" the young dragon growled. 

"To the people who destroyed my little pet? Why should I bother?" The voice sounded like that of a child. 

Red smiled ferally. "Should have kept your mouth shut," he said, and lunged, light flaring in his left hand as his sword shot forward. 

There was a cry, and . . . something . . . fell back onto grass still stiff with frost. It really was about the right size for a child, and the right general shape . . . but there the resemblance ended. It was too pink and had an almost muzzle-like outthrust of its face in place of a proper nose, with a lipless slit of a mouth on the underside. Instead of hair, it had fingers of pink flesh growing out of its head, and its hands were like mittens, the fingers all sealed together in a unit. More lengths of fleshy pink fell from its waist to its knees, undulating gently, but it didn't seem to be wearing any real clothing. Red had driven his sword right through its left arm, and was keeping it pinned to the ground by driving the tip of the blade into the soil. 

"So you're alive," it said, staring up at Red with fathomless, faintly glowing silver eyes. "My mistress is going to be very _interested_ to hear that. Is this all you have for allies? A dragon and a—" It turned its head to look at me. "Oh- _ho_. What have we here?" 

" _SILENCE IT! HE MUST NOT KNOW! HE MUST NOT! HE WILL ATTACK US BEFORE WE ARE ABLE TO DEFEND OURSELVES!_ " Pressure inside my head . . . hideous, intense . . . a tickle in my ear, warmth running down my neck . . . my hands rising, seemingly on their own . . . "Dark . . ." I wouldn't have known that word came from me if I hadn't been able to feel the vibration in my throat. "Dark. Ness. Be. Yond. Twi. Light." One syllable at a time, forced out against my will. Frantic, I bit down on my tongue, transformed the next word into a muffled gasp. I wasn't going to let the Voice win. 

"You think I give a fuck about what your _mistress_ is going to be interested in?" Red asked, grabbing the pink thing by the face. There was a flash of light, and then the child-sized creature crumbled into black dust and blew away on the wind. No one was paying any attention to me. I tasted blood as I unclamped my jaw. 

"Any idea what that was about?" Val was saying. 

Red shook his head. "No clue. It might just have been trying to mess with us. Mazoku're like that. Especially when they're fighting for their lives." 

"Maybe you're right. Just a second—I should check Taben. He exhausted his pool on that spell, and I doubt being attacked afterwards did him any good." 

My vision swam as Val knelt over me. The adrenaline was fading. I couldn't hold on. 

"So tired," I whispered, and gave up.


	10. "Red"

We'd gotten the stupid fucking mage back to the de-fished town and taken him to see a healer, who had cast Recovery on the lacerations on his back and pronounced nothing else seriously wrong. After that, we'd hauled him back to the inn and put him to bed and eaten supper and broken up to go back to our rooms. 

Then the hours crept at a snail's pace toward midnight and I couldn't sleep, and that wasn't just because the damned bed was too short—I'd evolved strategies to deal with that, given that I didn't have much choice. My problem was that bits of the day kept drifting through my mind, ricocheting off one another like a boxful of lightning snails in a mating frenzy. 

A Mazoku had been feeding off the horror and grinding despair of the cursed town. A Mazoku that had _known me_. Some of its words might not have matched up with reality, but I'd _seen_ the recognition in its eyes. 

One of the books on Mazoku that I'd flipped through at the library had been a massive compendium covering everything from jar devils to Ruby-Eye himself. It had fallen open in front of me at the beginning of the section on Deep-Sea Dolphin, and for a moment I'd only been able to stare at the illustration of a green-haired half-fish woman decorating the page and think, _that's wrong_. Dolphin had never been that graceful mermaid. Instead, she usually took a fully-human form, with her _blue_ hair held in place by shell-ornamented combs, and she wore her dress over a skin-tight singlet glittering with scales. I was sure of that. I could see her in my mind's eye, smiling unpleasantly. 

How the _hell_ would I ever have run into Dolphin? She hadn't even been an active participant in the Mazoku's wars in four thousand years, not since Ceiphied and Shabranigdo's throw-down had ended the Shinma War and destroyed half the world. And four thousand years was pretty fucking old, even for a dragon. Not outside the realm of possibility, not _quite_ , but unlikely. 

Mazoku knew me, and I knew Mazoku, including at least one very high-ranking one. And it was driving me nuts that I didn't know what the _fuck_ that meant. 

I snarled at the dark ceiling and uncoiled myself from my contorted position on the too-short mattress. Maybe if I was exhausted enough, I'd be able to sleep. Nothing else was working. 

Fully dressed, with my sword in its makeshift harness settled across my back, I headed downstairs and out of the inn. I'd find some quiet place and run through my sword-practice routine until my arms started to hurt . . . or until the sun came up, whichever. 

I was surprised to find that I wasn't alone on the front steps. "Val." 

The young dragon turned to face me, with a rueful smile. "You couldn't sleep either?" 

I shook my head. "Guess I'm still wound up too tight. Care for a little sparring?" I nodded to the lance grounded beside his foot. 

"Sure. Or there's something else we could try, if you're interested." 

"Like what?" 

Val visibly took a deep breath, nerving himself up. "I was thinking . . . even if you can't remember, you should still be able to shift shapes, and use your breath weapon. We don't know for sure that your transformation ability was sealed. And maybe being in your proper shape would help you remember. I know I always feel better when I'm in dragon form. There's a certain . . . comfort . . . No, that's the wrong word. Hell, I'm not even sure there even _is_ a word. But it makes me more centered inside myself." 

_More centered._ That did sound like something I needed, because today had me well on the way to going fucking nuts. "Either way, let's find somewhere away from the town." 

We used the bright moonlight to pick our way among the hills south of Chessen, back the way we'd come. It took fifteen minutes or so to find a quiet, empty valley, well away from any houses or the road. 

"Do you want to go a couple of rounds first?" Val asked, hefting his lance. 

It was tempting, in more ways than one. I loved to fight—I'd figured that out pretty early on. And Val was a worthy opponent. But I shook my head. 

"If my dragon form _is_ sealed somehow, I might need a lot of energy to fight through it." 

Val nodded, but he also frowned. "If there's a real seal, you may need more help than I can offer you to break it. I . . . really don't know how to make full use of my powers." 

"No one bothered to train you up?" 

"Aun—Someone did try, but there's something about my power that makes it fundamentally different from that of a golden dragon, so she wasn't able to help much. I picked up a few basic meditation disciplines and some white magic, that's all. The other spells I know, I learned mostly from books." Another deep breath, and it was difficult to tell in the moonlight, but I thought Val might be blushing. "Um. You should probably, er, strip. If we're really going to do this. Your clothes aren't enspelled, so if you manage to change with them still on, you'll split them." 

I smirked. "Afraid I'm going to blind you with my magnificence?" 

That startled a laugh out of him. "No, I just . . . never mind." 

"Fine. Give me a moment." 

I was tempted to keep my shirt on and let it get shredded, but since the alternative to the lime green I now wore was shocking pink, I resisted that temptation, folded the shirt, and set it on top of my battered coat. Boots followed, and trousers. I didn't wear anything underneath. I never had. 

I just wished the night air were a little warmer. 

"Can we get this show on the road before I freeze?" I asked. 

Val blinked. He seemed to be trying to pretend that he wasn't staring at me. "Yes. Sorry. Well. It's probably simplest to start with your tail. You won't have to worry about symmetry the way you would with your wings, and if you're able to begin the shift, it's possible that it will complete itself naturally. Or at least that's what I was always told." He took a step closer to me. "You have a nexus of energy here," he said, sliding his hand down the small of my back until it rested just above the crack in my ass. "It's a connection to the astral plane—all dragons have conjoined physical and astral bodies, and we shift part of our substance back and forth between the planes when we transform. All you need to do is concentrate your attention there and try to pull more of yourself through." 

Concentrate my attention on my ass, right. I decided to think of it as concentrating on my tailbone instead, since that was more germane as well as making me feel like less of an idiot. So: concentrate on my tailbone and try to pull part of my own substance out of the astral and into the physical world. 

I narrowed my eyes, and my attention along with them. _A door which is not a door . . ._ The nonsensical fragment flickered through my head, but it must have meant something to some part of me—a mnemonic, maybe?—because the world around me flickered too, the grassy hillside hollow becoming overlaid with a shifting darkness. A _familiar_ shifting darkness. Of all the places I'd seen since waking up in that ravine, this was the one that felt most like home. 

I braced myself for effort. In the physical world, this translated into planting my feet a bit further apart, but my astral self interpreted it in part as a need to drop onto all fours. Looking down only showed me moonlight on grass and my bare toes in the physical, but on the astral I could see red-scaled talons tipped with sharp claws. Glancing over my shoulder showed me folded wings and a large, red body ending in a tail that twitched lazily from side to side. There was something odd about the way my shoulders and neck were put together, but I didn't think this was the time to question it. 

_Dragon._ This was my true self. I knew it at a visceral level. 

I wasn't in the best of shape, though. My scales were dull, and I could tell I was much too skinny, the outlines of my bones clearly visible under my hide. And the scar I bore on my physical body existed on the astral too, a scaleless band of flesh beginning above the base of my left wing and ending below the ribcage. It looked like I'd just barely survived a fight with _something_ , and burned through most of my reserves while healing up. 

Was that why I didn't remember? Simple trauma and exhaustion of resources? I wanted to sneer, but that interpretation did have an advantage to it: my memory might recover on its own, along with the rest of me. 

For now, though, I had something I needed to try. Physical-me took a deep breath, and then I bent my mind to drawing my tail from one plane to the other. 

I could feel a tension build in my lower spine, a bone-deep pressure that gathered and then suddenly burst. Along with my head, or at least that was what it felt like. I lost my vision of the astral and dropped forward onto my hands and knees, my tail coiling protectively around my body. 

Tail. 

I took several deep breaths and forced myself back up onto my knees so that I could examine it properly. Dull red scales that I knew should have been glossy, every knob of my spine visible through the hide . . . but it was there. I began to laugh triumphantly, even though it still felt like my head was splitting open. 

Val crouched down beside me and ran his hands over my scales. They were unexpectedly sensitive, and I felt the tip of my tail twitch. "This is . . . I don't understand how your human body can look so healthy when the real you is in this kind of state." He sounded almost accusing as he traced the knobs of my bones with his fingers. 

I shrugged. "I got a look at myself on the astral, and it looks like I've been through a war—I have this scar there too," I said, tracing part of its meandering path down from my shoulder. "It's pretty obvious that I was fighting something, and it did a number on me. I don't know whether I won or not." I had a feeling I hadn't, though. Just a hunch, but it made me snarl, baring my teeth at my absent opponent. 

"We're going to have to make certain you get plenty of food and rest," Val said, sounding uncertain. "Otherwise you won't recover." 

"I'm not fragile," I growled. 

Val scowled and jabbed a finger at me. "You're in a weakened state. Whoever did this to you might come back to finish the job, and if you're not strong enough to handle him . . ." 

I grabbed his hand before it could touch the scar. "I'll manage." 

His flesh was warm and smooth, except in the places where that lance of his had built up callus to roughen it. I found myself running my thumb across his palm, following the faint lines etched into the skin. Val was still scowling, but his eyes had widened, and he was staring at our joined hands. He was also giving off a lot more of that wonderful smell that had first attracted my attention to him back before we had even met. I leaned forward and buried my face in his hair, breathing deep, feeling the jolt that ran through him at my touch. 

"Red, what are you doing?" The question was unexpectedly soft when it escaped. him. 

"I like the way you smell, that's all." Or was it? I liked the texture of his hair, too, and was his skin this soft all over . . . ? I wanted to tear his clothes off and find out. Fortunately, enough of my mind was still working for me to be able to tell that that might not be a good idea, but I could feel a growing warmth in my groin and the sensation of all my blood rushing to one particular point. _First hard-on I've had since I woke up in that fucking ravine. I'd never have expected it to happen over him._ But maybe I should have. I was a dragon, so it made sense that for a good fuck, I'd seek out another of my kind, and Val was the only one I knew. And I liked him as a person, his strength and pride and stubborn unwillingness to back down, even when faced with me. What I was feeling might just be my partial transformation screwing with my body, my senses, but I still didn't want to let him go, and he didn't seem entirely unwilling . . . 

_No._ Snarling, I wrenched myself away. What the hell _was_ I doing? Just because he didn't feel fighting me off was worth the risk of one of us getting hurt didn't mean he wanted me to throw him down on the ground and do the things that were suddenly popping into my head. 

"I don't know what came over me there," I said gruffly as I sat back on my heels. 

"It's alright," Val said. He looked a bit dazed. "It's taken me like that too, a couple of times, even without another dragon nearby." 

"So what's next?" 

Val licked his lips. "You shift back." 

" _What?_ " I pretty much roared the word in his face, but all it did was make his expression go hard and stubborn. 

"You don't even realize how debilitated you are, do you? Your true form is _nothing but skin and bone_. Shifting fully might _kill_ you, do you understand, Red? And I don't want that to happen. Change back." 

My hand shot out without my consciously willing it, closing around his throat. " _No one_ tells me what to do," I growled, the words welling up from somewhere very deep inside me. 

Val glared back at me. In his eyes was . . . not fear, not the quick-burning anger of the young man he seemed to be, but an ancient, molten-hot blackness. Hatred, implacable rage . . . they spoke to me, woke echoes from that deep-down place I'd just tapped. _When I find my way back, you little shit, I'm going to send you down to the Sea of Chaos to join Her, since you seem so enamoured of the idea!_ My hand tightened, and the face I saw in front of me wasn't Val's, but that of a black-haired boy-child with eyes as old as the world. _Hellmaster!_

There was a sudden pain in my arm, and my grip loosened involuntarily. I reared back, and the scene in front of me snapped back into focus: Val, with both thumbs dug into a pressure point on my arm, gasping for breath. _Val._ Not the boy with the strange eyes who couldn't be—who _was_ —Hellmaster Phibrizzo. 

"Fuck," I whispered, snatching my hand back with a wince. "Sorry." Admitting fault was worse than admitting ignorance. It felt like an enemy's teeth were digging into my throat. 

"You have to change back," Val said hoarsely. "You must have been fighting the last time you were fully shifted . . . the fire in your blood's meant for a dragon-sized body, but you're dumping it into a human one. _Please_ , Red." He said the word as though it tasted as bad to him as it would have to me. "If you don't, the strain might make your heart give out." 

I snarled at him, but . . . _No one tells me what to do._ To my mind, that included my own fucking body. 

_Change back._ Gather up my extra substance and push it back through to the Astral. Simple enough, but by Ruby-Eye, it _hurt_. As though I were cutting part of myself away, even though it was still attached. I was breathing in great gasps by the time I was done and the skin over my rump was smooth and scaleless again. 

" _Recovery,_ " Val whispered, holding his hand to his throat. It was difficult for me to look at him, so I went over to my clothes and started putting them back on as an excuse not to. 

I didn't return my sword to its usual position at my back right away, though. Instead I found myself fidgeting with it, pulling it an inch or two from the scabbard and then shoving it back in again. 

"How in hell can I know _two of them?_ " I growled at it. 

"Two of who?" Val asked. "Surely you owe me an answer to that, at least." He rubbed his neck pointedly. There were still dark marks there, traces of bruising where my fingers had dug in. 

"Two of the Dark Lords. Deep-Sea Dolphin and Hellmaster Phibrizzo. I want to kill Phibrizzo," I added, with a snarl that felt nowhere as cathartic as it had while my tail had been out. "So badly I almost regret that the little fucker's dead. I don't like that the only things I've remembered clearly so far are those two, their faces and that _hate_ , when I can barely recognize myself in a mirror." 

Val shook his head. "It's far-fetched, but could you have been their prisoner?" 

Far-fetched, maybe, but it was also possible to bend the idea to fit the facts: Starved and exhausted from the rigours of my escape, falling to earth unable to fully heal myself, my mind cringing away from the ordeal . . . 

"It's a theory," I admitted. Something to hang onto. In line with what I'd been thinking earlier, even. "Although I hate the thought that I might have been their pet." I spat, deliberately, to one side. 

Val shook his head. "'No one tells me what to do'," he quoted. "You'd be a pain in the ass even locked in a dungeon. I can't see you going along with anyone, even a Dark Lord, enough to be considered a pet." 

I stared at him for a long moment, seeking that darkness in his eyes again, but I couldn't find it—either it had only been my imagination, or it was hidden now. Veiled. 

A sudden thought made me chuckle darkly. "So much for getting a good night's sleep." 

Val grinned crookedly. "We could still have that sparring match." 

"So we could." I tossed the makeshift scabbard aside and hefted my sword, my grin becoming more genuine. "You're on."


	11. Val

I didn't hold Red's bout of change-madness against him. I'd had something similar happen to me a time or two, although never powerfully enough to make me go from triumph to lust to murderous rage within the space of a few minutes. Even when he'd tried to strangle me, I'd been more afraid for him than for myself. 

It was difficult to believe that someone so full of life, so forceful, was also walking so close to the edge . . . but I'd seen that poor tail of his. His true form had to be starved almost to death, and it made me angry that I couldn't figure out what to do about it. I didn't know of any way to transfer energy between us safely, I didn't know any applicable spells, and simply feeding him up the normal way might take years when it wasn't safe for him to revert to his dragon-form. Plus, he had to be drawing on his remaining astral energies to keep his human body healthy and be able to cast spells at all. 

If he didn't stop, it was going to kill him, but he was too damned proud for me to believe that I'd have any chance of persuading him. I'd been thinking about it for over a week now, as we crossed from Zoana to Taforashia and then moved on up into Seyruun, and still hadn't come up with a solution. Maybe someone in the city would know how to help—Seyruun was the White Magic Capital of the world, and lousy with temples and healers. Or so everyone said. 

What I tried hard _not_ to think about was the inward ache I'd felt when Red had nuzzled my hair. It wasn't as though he'd _meant_ it. We'd only known each other two weeks. I wasn't ready to talk about this yet. Even though it felt like I'd known him forever. Even though I'd jerked off twice now to the memory of that moment and the nightmare dreams, and the phantom sensation of huge teeth closing over the nape of my neck. And I would have done it more often if I'd been able to get enough privacy. 

_I want him._ It was time that I admitted it. I liked Red as a person, and I . . . not to put too fine a point on it, I _lusted_ after his body. My first crush. I'd never known anyone else who combined his strength and grace and intelligence and skill and love of battle. He was incredible, and I was more than a little afraid that if I told him so, I'd lose him. 

"Looks like we'll make it there before nightfall," Red rumbled, and I snapped back to the real world to realize that we'd crested a hill, and the city of Seyruun was laid out below us in the shape of a white magic ward. "Maybe even early enough to go up to the palace without having people get too pissed off at us." He had an odd expression on his face, part puzzlement, part incipient frown. 

"Have you been here before?" I asked him. 

"I think so. Maybe. I remember a fucking big crater right about there, though." His gesture took in part of the city and a section of the wall. 

"There's a sort of depression there," Taben said. He looked even weirder than usual when he was squinting, because of the way his monocle slightly magnified his eye. "Like there really _was_ a crater there at some point, and they didn't fill it in quite well enough." 

I felt something prickle over the surface of my skin as we passed the city gates. Not an entirely pleasant sensation. Red muttered a curse and scratched at his neck, face, and hands, and Taben blinked, looking puzzled. Jillas and Gravos didn't react, but then I'd met rocks that were more sensitive than either of them. 

At least Seyruun's layout was easy to fathom: the palace was at the center of the star of elevated roads. Since it was still quite early, we opted to go there first. We could look for an inn later. Maybe, if we were really lucky, Princess Amelia would even offer us lodging, as a courtesy. 

No one stopped us from entering the outer courtyard, but when we attempted to access the palace itself, we ran into an unexpected roadblock. 

"The princess is not here, sir," said the minor official, looking down his nose at our travel-worn group. "We can take your name and make an appointment for you when she and her consort return next week." 

"If you're lying . . ." Red let the growled words trail off in a way that implied mayhem quite nicely without openly stating it. The official paled, and every guard within earshot reached for his or her weapon. 

"I promise you, sir, I am telling the absolute truth. The princess and her consort are on a diplomatic trip to Ralteague, acting as King Philionel's representatives at the wedding of the heir to the Rateaguan throne. They are scheduled to return the day after tomorrow." 

_Well, that's just great._ Thankfully, we could afford to stay in the city for a lot longer than that, although I was probably going to have to pay all the expenses for everyone to keep people's tempers under control. If Red hadn't had the odd, selective patience of an older dragon, I wasn't sure even that would have been good enough, though. 

"My name is Val Ul Copt," I said. "I wish to speak to Princess Amelia Tesla Wil Seyruun about information she may possess about certain events which took place about twenty years ago." 

The official raised his eyebrows. "Something from her adventuring days, then . . . I'll see what I can do." 

"Gentlemen, excuse me please, but I'm here to see— _Val?!_ " 

I'd known the voice from the first syllable. There was no avoiding the confrontation even if I'd wanted to bowl the official over and try to lose myself in the depths of Seyruun's royal palace, so I gritted my teeth and slowly turned around. 

"Aunt Filia," I said coldly. 

Whether she didn't notice my tone or just didn't want to believe I meant it, I don't know, but she shouldered Taben aside and tried to hug me . . . and ran into Red's extended arm. Her tail promptly popped out, but thankfully she didn't go for her mace. Not yet. 

"Val, are you . . . You _are_ all right, aren't you? These people . . . are they . . . ?" 

"I'm fine," I said. "This is my friend Red, and the man you just _knocked down_ is Taben, a mage." 

"Taben the Green, ma'am," the mage under discussion said as he picked himself up and dusted off the skirts of his robe. "Pleased to meet you." 

I smirked as I saw the shiver run down Aunt Filia's tail. She had always reacted so strongly to the moment she realized she'd been rude to someone. Well, someone other than Xellos. 

"I never expected to find you here," she said to me. 

"I'm looking for answers. This struck me as a good place to start. Better than with you, at any rate." 

"Val . . ." 

I was hurting her. I knew I was hurting her. I _wanted_ to hurt her. 

She'd made me live a lie. 

"Do you want to try again?" I asked. "We can start with the fate of my people. How did you put it, Red? 'The goldens got ticked off at them for not offering all the support they could to the fight against the Mazoku and exterminated them down to the last egg about eight, nine hundred years ago,' I think it was." 

Aunt Filia went white, staring at Red. 

"The ancient dragons had in their possession Galvayra, the most powerful of the Dark Star Weapons—a couple of orders of magnitude stronger than Gorun Nova, the so-called Sword of Light," the big dimos dragon said. "During the Kouma War, they were approached by the golden dragon clan beholden to Vrabazard. _Your_ clan, if I'm not mistaken—oh, yes, I recognize those robes, even if you no longer wear the talisman of an active priestess, _Filia_. The ancient dragons refused to loan Galvayra to the goldens, since they felt it was too dangerous to use. The goldens, being a bunch of arrogant pricks—" 

"And here I thought you had the 'arrogant prick' market cornered," Taben said just a bit too loudly to not be heard. 

Red smirked. "I'm an arrogant _bastard_ , and don't you forget it. Anyway, the goldens thought they knew better than the ancients how Galvayra should be used, so they decided to take it for themselves—by force, if necessary. So once they were done licking their wounds from the Kouma War, they issued an ultimatum. The ancient dragons weren't having any, and so the whole mess blew up into a full-scale fucking dragon war right on top of the temple that housed Galvayra. Except that it ended up being more like a dragon slaughter, because the goldens were battle-hardened and fresh from the war, and the ancients had never fought." 

His smirk had faded now, and Red's expression was grim as he continued, "The bulk of the ancient dragons fought and died to buy time for their Elders to seal Galvayra away, and for a handful of hatchlings and pregnant females to escape. A few of that group managed to survive for a while, but because the goldens knew that the survivors might expose them as the fucking hypocrites they really were, they systematically hunted them down and hauled the bones up to the temple to stack on top of those of the defenders." A pause. "And knowing this history, you didn't tell it to the one most concerned." Red's voice had become a low, hypnotic growl. "Nice to know that the laws of the universe haven't changed, and the descendent of fucking hypocrites is still a fucking hypocrite. You didn't raise Val in ignorance to help him. You did it to help _you_. You wanted to mold him into a good little golden in all but name, didn't you?" 

Aunt Filia's tail had gone as rigid as the shaft of my lance. "How _dare_ you?!" she snarled, yanking her mace free of her garter. "You don't know _anything_!" She swung at Red. _Standard Xellos Arc Number Three,_ some detached part of me thought. _I wonder if she even realizes it would catch him in the shoulder and not the head?_

Red drew his sword and slammed it down on the mace, so that the heavy weapon chipped the edge of a marble step instead of hitting his shoulder with an impact that would have been deadly if he'd been merely human. His smirk was firmly in place again. "So why don't you tell us what we _don't know_ , Filia Ul Copt?" 

"I wanted him to be happy," she gritted out, trying to pull her mace loose. Red's sword didn't budge. 

"Happy—in a cage of lies?" I asked bitterly, and she jerked as though I'd slapped her. 

"I can't—" She stopped in mid-sentence and looked down at her feet, her expression miserable. "I can't talk about this right now," she said in a small, tired voice. "Could I please have my mace back?" 

Red made a negligent motion with his wrist and elbow, flipping his huge sword up to rest against his shoulder. 

"I'm staying at the Purple Raven, on Sky Street," Aunt Filia said, still in that small, tired, hopeless-sounding voice. Something clenched inside me—I'd wanted to hurt her, yes, but like this? _I'll be damned if I'm going to back down now,_ I told myself. 

When no one said anything, she slowly slid her mace back through her garter, apparently not caring that we could all see her legs. Then she turned, just as slowly, and left the courtyard, tail still out and dragging on the ground. 

"Val-sama . . . I don't know if you should have . . ." Jillas said, and sniffled. 

"When she's ready to answer my questions, I'll consider apologizing to her," I said. "Not before." 

The official, whom I think we'd all mostly forgotten, coughed. "Er . . . Red-sama, was it? Could you please put that sword away? You're making all the guards nervous," he added in a much softer tone. 

Red snorted, but he slid the sword back into its scabbard. 

"I'll send someone up tomorrow to find out where I am on the princess's itinerary," I said, and shouldered my lance. We'd been here long enough. 

Half an hour later, I was sitting on the edge of a balcony on the third storey of an inn and scowling out at the city. We'd only been able to manage two bedrooms this time, so I was in with Red and Taben while Jillas and Gravos shared a space the size of a large closet. 

"What's eating you?" Red asked, coming to stand by my left shoulder. 

I shrugged. "I suppose I'm trying to figure out whether I did the right thing. It's just . . . I'm so tired of not knowing." It felt so easy to confide in him, so safe. "That history lesson you went over on the front steps of the palace told me more about my people than Aunt Filia ever has . . . and she's had all my life to talk about it. Why did you decide she needed a lecture, anyway?" 

"She might not have. But you needed to know what happened, and why." A pause, then Red slowly added, "I wouldn't give a flying fuck about her either way if she hadn't hurt you." 

_I don't need your protection._ I _should be the one helping_ you _._ That felt . . . right. Very right. It might have been the first right thing I'd felt that day. 

"Anyway," the dimos dragon continued, "since we're going to be staying in the same place for a while, I'm going to go see if I can buy a fucking coat that fits. See you later." 

I turned just in time to see him grab the skirts of the tattered yellow-orange monstrosity he was still wearing and yank them past the arc of the closing door. If I was going to help him . . . None of the priests or shrine maidens here were likely to have much idea how to go about treating a dragon for astral exhaustion ( _except Aunt Filia_ , a corner of my mind whispered, but I forced myself to ignore it), but Seyruun's libraries were supposed to be the finest on the peninsula—possibly the finest in the world when it came to magic-related topics. Surely there had to be some useful information somewhere . . . 

Which was how, several hours later, I found myself paging through the eighth book I'd found that might possibly pertain to healing dragons when the word "dimos" on a page caught my eye. 

Dimos dragons, I read, were the largest of the dragon races, averaging a full ton heavier than blacks. Their scales were thick and rough, in shades that matched the stone of the mountains they lived among, a range of shades of grey and subtle tints. They were devoted to Earthlord Rangort, who had been their patron since the beginning of time. Given their size, they were particularly vulnerable to maladies caused by wear and tear on their joints . . . 

It took a moment for me to understand what I'd just read, and when I did, I felt the book fall from my nerveless fingers and land on the table I was sitting at with a loud crack that made one of the librarians look up irritably from her desk, ten feet away. 

Dimos dragons were grey, just as ancient dragons were black. 

I could imagine what Red was going to say when I told him, right down to the inflections. 

_So what the fuck am I?_


	12. Filia

I swung my mace and smashed the next rock to gravel, pretending it was that insuferrable man's head. I was halfway through the pile of future road-fill that the Seyruun Department of Public Works had hired me to reduce. I'd offered them my services for free, but they'd refused to not pay me. Really, I didn't care either way. Smashing lumps of granite was just a way of taking out my frustrations on something that couldn't dodge. 

_I'm an arrogant_ bastard _, and don't you forget it._ I felt a shiver run along my tail as I once again mentally pasted Red's face to a rock before I hit it. Damn it, how could he make me feel like this?! The only other person I'd ever hated on first meeting this way had been Xellos, and Red . . . Well. It had been a long time since I'd resigned as the Flarelord's shrine maiden. My senses were no longer as sharp as they had been. As far as I could tell, he felt like a dragon, but something about him was revoltingly wrong, and I didn't know why Val couldn't sense it. I'd thought he had good instincts, but he— 

I bashed another six rocks in rapid sequence, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. No, I was not going to let myself think that. It had just been the expression on his face, the anger in it. The young dragon standing on the steps to the palace with a sneer on his face had still been _my_ Val, not anyone or anything else. 

Not Valgaav. 

At first, I'd meant to tell him all of it. When he'd still been in the egg, or small enough to curl up in his basket, there hadn't been any question that he'd need to know some day . . . but not that day. It had to wait until he was old enough to understand. 

That hatchling had become a cheerful child. He might have been old enough to understand as young as eight or ten . . . but I hadn't wanted to destroy his happiness. And then, after the transition from cheerful child to moody adolescent, I'd been afraid to tip him over the edge. Afraid that pieces of Valgaav were already breaking loose inside his head, and that any discussion of the past might set the memories of the embittered half-Mazoku free. 

He'd been eleven when he started picking fights with the older human boys. A couple of years later, when no one from the town would fight him anymore, he'd moved on to adventurers and mercenaries passing through, always managing to make it _look_ like he was just defending himself or someone else. I hadn't been able to stop him, but to his credit, he'd figured out for himself that what he was doing wasn't sustainable and signed himself up for the town militia when he was fifteen. 

I hadn't taken _that_ at all well either. In fact, I'd locked him in the apartment above the shop for three days until the militia captain had come by to find out why Val hadn't been coming to weapons practice and persuaded me to let him out. 

Since then, Val's life had consisted of doing odd jobs around town to build up his savings, patrolling with the militia . . . and avoiding me as much as possible. If he'd ever had any close friends, I wasn't aware of them, although there was a group of younger children, whom he'd saved from bullying or worse, that worshipped the ground he walked on. All his passion and effort went into his weapon-skills and his magic. He'd talked a few times about traveling to the peninsula that had been inside the Mazoku's barrier in order to obtain some instruction in black and shamanistic magic. I'd encouraged his interest in white magic, and taught him all the spells I was still able to perform, but it hadn't been enough for him, and he was never able to achieve the frame of mind necessary to cast holy spells. Instead, he'd pestered poor Zelgadis when the chimera had passed through town in search of yet another rumoured cure for his condition, and Zel, bless his heart, had taught Val a few non-destructive spells and arranged to have a grimoire sent to him. 

It was a recipe for the education of a human adventurer, not the last ancient dragon, and I'd wondered many times if settling in a cosmopolitan but primarily human town had been a mistake. Other than me, Val had only ever met one of our kind: Elder Milgazia from Dragon's Peak, who had never said why he was in the area when he'd darkened the door of my shop one day. We'd had tea and a pleasant chat, and he'd briefly spoken to an eight-year-old Val. He'd offered us sanctuary with his clan, but I'd refused him, saying that Val had already put down roots in the town. 

That might have been another mistake. The one time I'd suggested that Val might like to seek out other dragons, he'd responded that they weren't his people, that his people were dead, and the whole thing had escalated into a shouting match that had ended with him slamming the door so hard that it came off the hinges yet again, and spending the night on the floor of a storage shed owned by the militia. 

My human friends in town who had raised teenagers of their own claimed that the whole rage-and-angst thing was a pretty common phase and Val would get over it eventually . . . but Val was a dragon, even though he'd been growing up abnormally fast. I hadn't quite been able to make myself believe that he wouldn't be stuck in the darkness for a very long time. Perhaps even forever. 

"And what did that rock ever do to you, Filia-san?" 

Suddenly, all my feelings found a target. " _Xellos!_ " I took a swing at him, but he just popped out of the physical plane and then back in. It was . . . almost routine, since he'd never been able to break himself of the habit of showing up at my shop a couple of times a month, and I'd never been able to stop myself from trying to kill him when he did. 

Maybe I hadn't been such a great role-model for Val after all. I hadn't meant to teach him that violence was an acceptable way of venting frustration, but actions speak louder than words. 

"You know, Filia-san, we've been doing this for twenty years now, and not _once_ have you hit me, unless I let you do it," the Mazoku said, waggling a finger at me. "I think your form needs improvement. Young Val's already caught me a couple of times, you know—it must be that incessant training he does." 

"Shut up, garbage," I growled, but my heart wasn't in it. 

Xellos' supercilious smile went away, to be replaced by a more serious expression. "Most Mazoku find despair really tasty, you know—like a high-quality dark chocolate. But I prefer wrath. It's lighter and spicier. That's why you make such a nice snack . . . usually. This hopelessness isn't like you, Filia-san." He waggled that finger again. I wanted to bite it off. 

"I think I may have ruined Val's life," I blurted out, and then I burst into tears. "A-and I c-can't fix it because he won't l-listen to m-me anymore!" 

It was a relief to get it out—to tell _someone_ , even if it was a garbage Mazoku who would probably use it against me and didn't care enough about me to offer a hanky. 

Sure enough, that damnable smile was back on his face. "Young Val has an ancient dragon's pride," he said. "It's why he was so insufferable as Gaav's minion—dragon pride and Mazoku pride piling up on top of one another. And he's an adult now, if just barely. I expect he's past the point of listening to _anyone_." 

"Except that _bastard_ Red," I said, blowing my nose on my own hanky, and one of Xellos' eyes opened just a sliver. I'd surprised him, which didn't happen often, but when he spoke his tone wasn't serious at all. 

"Really, Filia-san, I've never heard you use such language before." 

"He was the one who picked the label," I said. "I'm just using it in accordance with his wishes." 

"Oh? Young Val has fallen in with bad company, then? Well, given what a terrible mother you are, I suppose it was only a matter of time! You're making me curious about this 'Red' person—what kind of man is he exactly?" 

"He's a dragon, I think. A strange, twisted one," I added around the lump in my throat. "He knew about the massacre of the ancient dragons—details I wasn't aware of, like how some hatchlings escaped the slaughter at the temple and were hunted down later." 

"That's very interesting," Xellos said, tapping a finger against his chin. "I think everyone involved with the Valgaav affair pledged not to spread the information around unnecessarily, and the elders of your clan hid it well enough that even _you_ didn't know the story until the overworlders started poking into things. I take it this 'Red' isn't a _golden_ dragon." 

"That uncouth menace? Certainly not!" 

"Hmm. That does rather limit the avenues by which he could have gotten the information—unless he witnessed the entire sequence of events at first-hand, of course. Which is certainly possible, since it wasn't that long ago by dragon standards. Perhaps I've even run into him before . . . briefly." There was a slight edge to Xellos' smile as he spoke the last word. 

"I hardly think he's the ghost of someone you slaughtered during the Kouma War, garbage. His arm was certainly solid enough when I ran into it. More than that, he was strong enough, physically, to keep my mace pinned." 

Xellos laughed. "So you took a swing at him? Really, Filia-san, I'm starting to feel like a rejected suitor! Do you extend your affections to just anyone now? Poor Red, destined to be the latest in a string of—" 

"I'll give you all the 'affection' you want," I snapped as I swung my mace again. It whistled cleanly through the space where the garbage Mazoku had been as he popped out and reappeared behind me, wrapping his arms around my neck. "You walking pile of filth! Let me go!" 

"So you weren't serious? You're just going to let me waste away, unable to keep myself fed while the warding built into the very fabric of the city of Seyruun continues to sap my energies . . ." He finished with a faux-tragic sigh. 

"What _are_ you doing here, anyway?" I asked, angry with myself for not having asked that before—being wrapped up in my own problems was no excuse. Seyruun's protections wouldn't be any more than a minor nuisance to a Mazoku of Xellos' class, but that didn't mean it was comfortable for him, or a place where he'd choose to be of his own accord. "What can Beastmaster possibly want here that she couldn't have gotten at any time in the past twenty years?" 

"Why, Filia-san, I came to see _you_ , of course!" 

Without looking, I reached back over my shoulder and grabbed, ending up with a handful of silken purple hair. Then I yanked. 

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Please let go, Filia-san! You're going to snatch me bald!" 

"You can't tell me that really hurts you, garbage," I said . . . but I did stop pulling. 

"Well, I do pride myself on the quality of my human mimicry!" A slight pause, then, "There are strange energies swirling around this city. Beastmaster-sama ordered me to come here and investigate anything that seemed odd. She even interrupted her pedicure to do it! But I don't know why she's concerned, and the concentration of white magic in Seyruun is making it difficult to figure out what's so strange about what I sense. Was that ominous enough for you, Filia-san? I did want to see you as well, you know!" 

I was still boggling at the thought of Xellos giving his mistress a pedicure, and so didn't answer right away. My preoccupation loosened my grip, allowing him to flicker his way through the astral and end up in front of me again. 

"Anything that seems odd . . . like Val?" _Please, Ceiphied, no._

"Oh, no, not at all—there's nothing odd about an orphaned dragonling going on a journey in search of his past, or a young man of any species wanting to leave home at about Val's age!" 

"Like Red, then?" 

"I do admit that what you've said about him makes me curious. I don't suppose you'd care to describe him, so that I might be able to find him? Or I could always look for Val, I suppose, and have him lead me to his travelling companions!" 

"Keep away from my son, garbage!" Val had never been wary enough of Xellos for my taste. I didn't want them meeting without me there to keep an eye on the Mazoku. "As for Red . . . His human form is about seven and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered and muscular, not young but not old. His hair is exactly the colour you'd expect, and he wears it longer than I do mine. He carries a sword a good five feet long in a harness across his back. When I saw him, he was wearing a dilapidated orange-gold trenchcoat over a lime-green shirt and dark trousers, so he might be colour-blind." I didn't care if I was throwing the self-proclaimed arrogant bastard to the wolves—he and Xellos deserved each other, as far as I was concerned. "I have no idea what his dragon form would look like." 

I blinked—had Xellos' body actually _rippled_ for a moment there, as though I were seeing it through disturbed water? The effect was gone before I could be quite sure, but . . . 

"Really, Filia-san, there are many Mazoku who would _love_ that colour scheme!" Xellos said, still all smiles. "Well, this has been a most interesting conversation, but I must be going! I'll see you tomorrow, perhaps." 

One of the reasons I hated the garbage Mazoku so much was that he made his exits too quickly for my mace to connect. Every. Single. Time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I put too many exclamation points in Xellos' dialog here, or something.


	13. Taben

"And the voice is articulate? It actually speaks words?" 

I nodded. "More than that, my friend says it actually took over his body once, forcing him to say and do things that he never would have on his own." 

The healer-priest stroked his chin. "Hmm. Well, there are a few kinds of derangement that could produce those symptoms, but possession by some weak or incompletely connected entity _does_ seem more likely. It would be easier to tell if your _friend_ would present himself for examination, of course." The way he emphasised the word _friend_ told me that he'd seen through my lie about the sufferer's identity, making me wish I'd taken the time to concoct something better. "If the entity was incompletely connected, that could explain why the exorcism failed." 

"So what would you recommend that my friend do?" I asked, hoping for something I hadn't heard yet in a full day of making the rounds of Seyruun's temples. 

"Well, a very strong Talisman of Warding might help. It would have to be custom-made, of course . . ." 

"Of course," I echoed. "I take it that there's a charge for this service?" 

"Regrettably, yes—you must understand that the sheer density of temples and shrines in Seyruun makes it impossible for any of us to subsist on donations alone, so we must use additional methods of fundraising . . ." 

Well, at least this one admitted it straight out, instead of wasting my time dancing around the issue. "How much?" 

The figure he named would have eaten up two-thirds of my life's savings, placing it solidly in the middle of the offers I'd had. 

I nodded curtly. "I'll inform my friend. Thank you for your time." 

The square outside the temple had a shade tree with benches around it at the center, and I flopped down on one and stared morosely at the ground. That was the nineteenth healer-priest I'd spoken to, and they'd all given me the same advice. Well, except for one quack who'd recommended an herbal infusion to steady my "friend"'s nerves. But none of them had offered me the requisite talisman at a price I could afford to pay. I was half-tempted to try to make it myself—I'd done white magic talismans before, although nothing more powerful or complex than a Dicleary poison-buffer—but I didn't know the warding spell required (assuming that I could even cast it, or get Val or Red to do so as a favour), and I doubted the items in my talisman kit would be enough to create a suitable substrate. White magic talismans were made from crystals of natural stone, not the coral and seashells I normally worked with, and good-quality, unflawed quartz was expensive here, with the temples snatching up most of the supply before it reached the open market. 

The Voice had been silent since the night Red had turned that Mazoku into a pile of powder, but I wasn't willing to bet that it would stay that way. It was probably just exhausted from having taken over the reins, even if it had only been for a few seconds. 

"Oh, dear, you look like you've had a difficult day!" 

"None of your business," I said. This stranger didn't look dangerous, but the guileless grin on his face was annoying. And he was dressed as some kind of priest, complete with a staff topped with a red jewel. I'd had enough of priests since we'd reached Seyruun to last me a lifetime. 

"Maybe not, but you really should keep a positive attitude—it'll make you feel better." 

"Do you always smile like that, or is your face stuck that way?" If he was going to insist on talking to me, there was no harm in taking out some of my frustrations on this idiot. 

"Oh, no, my face isn't stuck—but when you serve Lilielle, Goddess of Laughter, you're required to be cheerful!" 

"Never heard of her." 

"Oh, so you're another person with a thing for those boring dragon gods? Whenever I try to discuss other deities with someone in this city, they either ignore me or laugh at me. It's rather embarrassing, really." 

"Maybe a city that _isn't_ lousy with Ceiphied shrines would be a better place for you to preach about this—" What had the name been? "—Lilielle." 

"Hmm . . . You might have a point!" His smile broadened. "My name's Xellos, by the way." 

"Taben." 

"That's a northern name . . ." 

"I'm from Kalmaart." 

Xellos flopped down on the bench beside me. "And you thought you would see more of the world?" 

"I was kicked out of the Sorcerer's Guild in my hometown. Not that it's really any of your business." 

"I just want to help," Xellos said, with an innocent expression. "Did you have any adventures on your way to Seyruun?" 

"Only if you count being attacked by bandits, having a travelling companion cursed by Mazoku, and sharing rooms in run-down inns with a seven-foot-tall mercenary-adventurer who snores like a demented dragon as 'adventures'," I grumbled. "I'd rather be bored, thanks very much." 

"Then are you going to settle in Seyruun?" 

I shook my head. "One of the people I've been travelling with has business here. After that, we're moving on." The conversation was starting to feel very odd. Was Xellos trying to pump me for information, or was I just being paranoid? "Besides, there's no call for my particular skillset here." 

"Ah, I see! Well, if you're headed west, you may want to stay away from southern Lyzeille. I've heard they're having an outbreak of the Blue Plague there." 

I shrugged. "If I get that far, I expect it won't be until after it's run its course. Besides, Blue Plague isn't fatal." Unpleasant and itchy and prone to make you look like a fish-man for a couple of weeks, or so I'd always heard, but not fatal. 

"Mmm? So you _are_ going west?" 

" _I_ am, eventually. I don't know about the others." 

"You're not going to have your friends help you push your way back into the Guild in your home city?" 

Who _was_ this man? The more I talked to him, the odder it felt. He _seemed_ to be a silly, insouciant pain in the ass, but there was a darker undercurrent to him too. Peel away the surface layers, and I had a feeling Xellos would turn out to be dangerous. 

"Why would I want to do a stupid thing like that?" I asked. "I'd rather go somewhere that I'm welcome." 

"You mean you don't want revenge for how you were treated?" And there was that edge of darkness again. He didn't seem to be trying quite as hard to hide it as he had been before. 

I snorted. "Revenge was the reason I had to leave Vezendi so suddenly. The Guildmaster there tried to set me up with his awful sister after I stink-bombed his office, which I did because he'd had my last shipment of seashells dropped over a cliff so that most of them broke . . . and so on. We've been going back and forth a couple of times a month since we were apprentices. Anyway, after that I decided that revenge was just making things worse, so I made an oath to Ragradia that I'd do my best to avoid it from now on." 

"Not that a dead dragon god will be able to do much if you violate the oath's terms," Xellos pointed out. 

"Why does it seem to important to everyone I run into lately to point out that Ragradia's dead?" I wondered aloud. The conversation was starting to get much too weird for my taste. "Look, I have to go—I'm meeting my travelling companions for dinner." 

"Well, then, I won't keep you! I'm going to be in the city for a while longer, so perhaps our paths will cross again!" 

_Not if I can help it._ "It was a pleasure to meet you." 

I wasn't quite sure why, but I followed a zig-zag route back to our inn, even introducing a full loop into my path at one point to reduce the chance I was being followed. The thought of running into Xellos again made my skin crawl. I wasn't sure quite why that was, either. 

The others seemed to have all beat me back, because when I unlocked the door to our shared room, I walked in on the middle of a conversation. 

"—never was entirely sure that fit anyway," Red was saying. "It was just an inference." He was leaning against the balcony railing with his sword propped beside him. He wasn't wearing that awful coat for once, and at some point during the afternoon, he'd managed to find a short-sleeved shirt in a non-garish shade of tan that was big enough to fit him. The lack of his loose overgarment made it even more clear than usual that his biceps were as thick as my thighs. The sun, low in the west, struck highlights from his hair, suggesting that he'd found time to wash it properly. 

"What's up?" I asked. 

"Red isn't a dimos dragon," Val said. He looked very tired. "So we're back to not knowing what he is." 

"Worries you more than it worries me," Red said. "I need to know _who_ I am, not what exact species." 

"Are we still going to Dragon's Peak after we leave Seyruun, then?" If we weren't . . . well, the rearrangement of plans would actually make things better for me, but I'd never been all that fond of sudden change. 

"It's probably still the best place to ask for information," Val said. "I'd like to get to the bottom of this, if we can." 

Red grunted. Then he stiffened and jerked his head upward. " . . . Shit," he said. 

"What?" I asked. 

"Mazoku, I think. A strong one, not something like that little pissant we fought near Chessen. It was only there for a split second, though." 

Val bowed his head and closed his eyes, remaining unmoving for several moments. "I don't sense anything," he said, opening his eyes again. 

"It might be trying to hide," Red said. "And there's no guarantee it has anything to do with us. Still, I'd like to set up some protections in here before we go to sleep tonight." 

I nodded agreement. I also had a question of my own, and after a moment, I shrugged and asked it. "By the way, Red, what happened to your coat?" 

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." 

"Try me," I said. 

"Remember what I told you about how horses act around me?" 

"Something about them being terrified of you?" _Except in more colourful language._

"More or less. Well, I managed to spook one pulling a dray full of birdlime, and a couple of the barrels got smashed and splattered me. Which the coat might have survived if some fucking idiot hadn't been practicing his Bomb di Wind near an herbalist's stall just down the way. I ended up coated in catnip." 

I snickered. " _Catnip?_ " 

"Catnip," Red repeated with a disgusted expression. "Even after I ditched the coat, I had every stray cat in Seyruun follow me to the nearest bathhouse. Took me a couple of hours to get the mess out of my hair and off my sword, and the stuff fucking stinks, too." 

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh. The image of Red with a parade of stray cats following him through the streets was just too hilarious. _I'd bet he was wearing exactly that expression the whole time, too._

"Thanks," I said when the hilarity had finally run down. "I needed that." 

"You couldn't possibly have had that bad a day," Val said. 

_You try getting effectively turned down by nineteen different temples in a row,_ I thought . . . but I couldn't tell them that, so instead I said, "Just before I got back here, I had a rather odd conversation, and I think it spooked me a bit. A man named Xellos just walked up to me, and—What is it?" Both Red and Val were now wearing identical frowns. 

"Xellos—purple hair, priest's robes, smiles all the time even when it isn't appropriate?" Val's hand was playing along the shaft of his lance. 

I blinked. "You know him?" 

"That explains why I was sensing Mazoku. That fucking slimy cone . . ." 

"Wait a minute, please—I feel like I'm missing something. You're saying that Xellos is a Mazoku? He looked perfectly human." And I was starting to have a very bad feeling about this. 

"So do most higher-level Mazoku when they want to, and Xellos is Zelas Metallium's fucking _Priest_ —one of the most powerful in the world, after the Dark Lords themselves. If he's here, either Zelas has her nose in something in Seyruun, or she's contracting him out." 

"Maybe not," Val said, still twiddling restlessly with his weapon. "Aunt Filia is in Seyruun, after all, and he pops in and out of her shop every now and again just to annoy her. He's someone else she met back when she was traveling with Lina Inverse." 

I blinked. _Lina Inverse? Seriously?_

"He wouldn't have been talking to Taben if he just wanted a fucking snack of Dragon Cuisine." 

"No, but he might have been setting up something that would get him a larger meal. Or just because he was bored." Val grimaced, and added, "I expect we'll find out within the next few days."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Xellos' dialog here in such a way that he wasn't really lying was . . . interesting. I still wonder who he convinced to tell him that there was an outbreak of Blue Plague in Lyzeille, and how much he paid them to say it. ;P


	14. Val

I woke up the next morning feeling hung over. It took me a moment to remember why, and when I did, I groaned. Taben had spent four _hours_ plying me with beer so that he could cadge Lina Inverse stories out of me. Lina Inverse and Shabranigdo, Lina Inverse versus Zanaffar, Lina Inverse in Taforasia . . . Never mind that I had all of it at second- or third-hand, since I hadn't seen the lady herself since I'd barely been tall enough to come up to her waist when I was in human form. I hadn't gotten very far into Lina Inverse and the Claire Bible and Hellmaster, which was just as well, because I was kind of fuzzy on the details of that series of adventures. Taben had finally shut up when Jillas, always a cheap drunk because of his size, had started dancing on the table and then passed out a few minutes later. We'd all been feeling kind of fuzzy by then, though. 

Taben was still lying at an odd angle across his bed, on top of the blankets, snoring. Red's bed was empty, but I could see him through the glass balcony doors, currently closed. He seemed to be running through some sort of sword practice routine, barefoot and bare-chested, with the morning sunlight emphasizing the flex of powerful muscles and turning his hair into a crown of fire. He looked like a god of war. 

I stared, with my mouth dry and my morning wood very stiff indeed. My body didn't seem to care that I would have had to be crazy to fall for him—an amnesiac male mystery dragon who was likely two _hundred_ times my age, not even the same _species_ as me (although if I restricted myself only to other ancient dragons, I was in for a lifetime of frustrated celibacy), with a coarse manner and a brutal attitude. One who might, on top of everything else, be dying. 

Despite all his shortcomings, I wanted him desperately, and if he ever started to show the least bit of real interest . . . 

Red ended his sword practice. He turned his back to me for a moment, looking out at the city with his sword propped against his shoulder, and although I couldn't see his face, I somehow knew he was frowning. Then he shook his head slightly, turned around, and came back inside. 

"Can't get rid of the feeling I'm missing something," he said without bothering with anything like a "good morning", the sound of his voice more of a low growl than a murmur. "Although if I knew what it was, I wouldn't be missing it, I suppose. Like my fucking memory. You look like shit." 

"My own stupid fault," I said. "I shouldn't have drunk so much last night—or I should have part-changed when I got back here to get it out of my system. It's too late now." 

"And I bet you haven't had the sense to do anything about it since you woke up, either. Come here." 

Four steps to cross the floor. I wasn't sure why I suddenly felt so selfconscious. When I was standing opposite Red, he reached out his free hand and tilted my chin up, studying my face for a moment. 

"I don't think you're that badly off, but with that damned slimy cone Xellos floating around, I'd rather have you in full fighting form. _Dicleary._ " 

I almost groaned in relief as I felt the Power Word engage—I've always found it difficult to cast with a headache, and while I would have managed something eventually, I would probably have had lingering symptoms for the rest of the day due to reduced magical efficacy. 

"Thanks," I said. "If Taben wants more Lina Inverse stories tonight, I think I'll refer him to Princess Amelia—they travelled together for years, after all." 

"Lina . . . Inverse," Red said slowly, frowning. "I was too sloshed to realize it last night, but . . . she's about so tall, isn't she? Red hair. Flat-chested. Has a smart mouth." 

I blinked. "You know her? But that's great—it means Princess Amelia might be able to tell us who you are!" 

"She may not want to tell me," Red said. "You see, I have a feeling . . . we weren't on the same side." 

"I'm not sure how much of a difference that would make—Aunt Lina and Xellos weren't always on the same side either, but she . . . kind of tolerates him, from what I understand." I hesitated, then added, "I'd offer to step between you and the people at the palace if it looked like they were going to attack you, but I know you'd just get pissed off, not take me up on it." 

"Why would you even bother?" There was curiosity in the question, and genuine confusion in his frown. 

"Because you're more important to me than them." 

"Val, you've known me all of two weeks." 

I felt an impulse to put my hand on his shoulder, to feel the warmth of his skin and the solidity of his muscles, but I restrained myself—this conversation was intimate enough already. "Is that all that matters? The length of time I've known you? You're one of the very few people I know that's never lied to me and that I'm not angry with right now—doesn't _that_ count for anything?" 

"You're asking me?" 

"Why not?" 

"Fuck, Val, I don't think I exactly have that many friends. Even when I'm in my right mind." 

"Well, you've got one now. Deal with it. I have your back, and if it came to it, I know you'd have mine." I punched him lightly on the shoulder—a safe kind of touch. Comradely. He shifted automatically to avoid the strike, so that my knuckles only just made contact. "Now, get dressed properly so that we can go find some breakfast." 

"Closer to lunch," Red said, but he turned around and picked his shirt up from where he'd left it on the bed. 

"You still need a coat, too," I said. "Did you even have time to look yesterday, or were you too busy with the cats?" 

"Don't even _mention_ cats to me." That came out as a true growl—not loud, but deep enough to make the floor vibrate. 

We left Taben still snoring. I made a quick detour on my way out of the inn to check on Gravos and Jillas, and found the former still asleep and the latter swallowing some kind of bitter powdered hangover cure from the Outer World, with his muzzle all wrinkled up and his good eye squinted almost shut. Jillas usually refused magical healing, so I shut the door to the sound of a whispered, "Go away, _please_ , Val-sama." 

We found a run-down cafe with an open terrace on a back street, and decided to eat there because the furnishings were made of white-painted wrought iron that wouldn't collapse under Red's weight (there had been an unfortunate incident with a wicker chair when we'd passed through Zoana City . . .). The food turned out to be plain and a bit bland, but edible—I mean, really, so long as it's cooked through and not burnt black, there isn't much you can do to ruin bacon—and they were willing to keep it coming for as long as we kept paying. When we were done, we moved on to the shopping district. 

Red had figured out where to find the tailors that catered to beastmen the previous day, although he hadn't had a chance to buy much before the birdlime-and-catnip incident. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing as we passed an alley that seemed to be packed wall-to-wall with very happy cats . . . with a few scraps of familiar garish yellow-orange peeking out between them. 

Speaking of which . . . "I hope you're going to pick a different colour this time. Your old coat didn't really suit you." 

"I liked it," Red said, one bushy eyebrow rising. "Or at least, I think I did, before it got torn to shit," he added. 

"It was still a bit much," I said. "I'm surprised you didn't burn people's eyes out." 

"You're not exactly a fucking fashion plate yourself." 

I shrugged—Aunt Filia had only ever provided me with plain clothes in neutral shades of tan, medium grey, and off-white, and I'd had better things to spend my money on than expanding the selection. Now that I thought about it, it was as though she wanted me to fade into the background . . . and that wasn't really who I wanted to be. "Maybe I should do a little shopping of my own. But I still think you would look better in blue, or maybe grey or black." 

"Blue would show bloodstains too much." 

"And yellow doesn't?" 

"Damned if I know, but my old coat didn't stain no matter what I did to it." Which, come to think of it, was true—the upper part of it had been badly shredded, but I couldn't remember it being discoloured anywhere. 

"Probably a waterproofing spell," I said. "Which we can have put on whatever you buy here—Taben probably knows how to do it, given his specialty. Let's look around." 

We had the same problem as before, though: werewolves and troll mixes, who were the most common large-framed beastmen here on the peninsula, didn't wear all that many clothes, so there wasn't much call for ready-made garments for them. Some stalls and stores had trousers (with tail-holes) and a few had shirts. No coats at all . . . except for one. It looked like it was made of the finest silk, shimmering in the sunlight, with intricate gold-thread embroidery on the collar and yoke. 

It was also as white as a snowy mountaintop. 

"No," Red said as I examined it. "No, not a chance. Not even if it was the last fucking coat in the world. Besides, I doubt it's for sale." 

I blinked. "Why wouldn't it be?" 

"It's my husband's funeral robe." The female werewolf manning the counter spoke without looking up. "He will be burned tomorrow. In the meanwhile, the robe hangs here to inform any of our kin passing through this city of his death. I wouldn't have opened the stall today, but the pups still need to eat." 

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said—formula without any real feeling behind it, but I knew it was appropriate. 

She looked up, and I was startled to see that her left eye was so swollen she could barely force it open. "I'm not." 

"I'm sorry," I repeated, more sincerely this time. I also reached for the damaged side of her face, only stopping when she flinched back. "I know some magic—I should be able to make the swelling go down, at least." 

She turned that side of her face away. "I . . . the thought of anyone _touching_ me right now is . . ." 

As I lowered it, my hand closed slowly into a fist. "I'm sorry," I said yet again. 

The werewolf woman breathed out slowly, then in. "Your friend is looking for a coat, isn't he? Wait here for a moment." 

She retreated behind a curtain, and we could hear her rummaging around. When she emerged again, she had an armload of faded blue fabric, which she shook out and laid out on the counter to reveal a coat similar in style to Red's old one. 

"It was my husband's," she said. "We're from northern Kalmaart. It gets cold enough up there in winter that you want an extra layer over even the thickest fur." 

Red watched her as he reached over and smoothed his hand along the coat's collar. Then he slipped out of his sword-harness and propped the weapon against the counter. He picked the coat up, swirling it into place. The buttons were of glossy black stone, intricately carved but much smaller than the ones on his old coat. He fastened them, and then stretched experimentally, mimicking an overhand sword strike. "Fits well enough. How much do you want for it?" 

"I'll settle for having it out of my sight." 

Red shook his head and pulled out a handful of coins. "Can't feed those pups on your feelings of relief." 

She stared at the handful of gold as he slapped it down on the counter. It was more than the coat was worth, and they both knew it. They were staring at each other as she slowly lowered her hand to cover the coins. 

"Why?" she asked. 

A shrug. "I need a coat, and this is the only one I've found in the entire city that fits. And . . . you survived him. You fought back when it mattered. I can respect that." 

"You—how did you—?" Her hand flew to her muzzle. 

"You've got that look to you—glassy, like part of you still can't believe that you did it. I've seen it before." 

She closed her eyes, and a long shudder ran through her. "Get out of here, please." 

"I think I'm missing something here," I said as we left the stall. 

"Her husband didn't just die. She killed him. Defending her puppies, if I don't miss my guess. She wouldn't have done it to save herself." 

"Oh." I hesitated, then decided to ask. "Do you remember _where_ you've seen that look before?" 

Red chuckled. "Always trying to push me along, aren't you? No, I don't. I'm starting to think part of me doesn't really want to remember whatever crap I've put myself through over the years . . . but at the same time, I need to know. Enough to be sure I'm not putting you in danger, anyway." 

"I wouldn't care if you did. I promised I'd have your back, didn't I?" And it felt right. So very, achingly right. Like I'd come home. 

"So you did—but I'm going to have to keep testing it for a while before I quite believe it." 

I punched him in the arm, and once again, he rolled with it. My knuckles hit his coat, but there was no force behind it. "Has anyone ever told you that you have a talent for pissing people off?" 

"How would I know? Probably, though." Red smirked. Then he squinted as something in the distance. "Is that Jillas? What's he doing . . . ? Oh." 

I scanned the area up ahead and found the rusty orange of red fox-man fur, near the entrance to a small temple. He was talking to someone blonde . . . in white robes . . . _Oh._ Well, it made sense that Aunt Filia would want to keep tabs on me. Although I didn't have to like it. 

"You decided what you're going to do about her?" 

"Nothing," I said. "Because that's what's going to make her the most unhappy. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to bring myself to talk to her again. Because of her, my life's been built entirely on _lies_. I don't know if she even really loves me. I might just have been a way for her to atone." 

"Oh, no, she really _does_ love you, Val-kun—so much so that it can be nauseating to be around her when she's with you." 

Neither the voice nor the words were anything I wanted to hear, and I yanked my lance from its shoulder-harness, spun it in my hands and struck out as I pivoted on my heel. I hadn't gotten the angle quite right, though, and the blade tangled in his clothes instead of cutting on through. 

Xellos laughed. "Very good," he said. " _So_ much better than your mother's best effort, as I informed her when I ran into her yesterday!" 

"That woman is _not_ my mother. And I'm not playing your games today." 

"Get the fuck out of here," Red added from beside me. "Before I decide to give Val a hand." 

The Mazoku's eyes flickered open, and I tensed. "You think you can win against me?" he asked Red. "In your state? Clawing your way back up out of the Sea of Chaos seems to have drained you rather badly. Are you sure you've been eating right?" 

Red smirked. "Are you sure you want to find out?" 

"You'd probably enjoy it too much," Xellos said . . . but his eyes were still open, and his smile was knife-edged, the trickster mask he usually hid behind completely wiped away. I'd never seen him like this before . . . or had I? There seemed to be a ghost of a memory . . . something from when I was small? Cave . . . darkness and hatred and the pain in my right arm as the flesh endlessly twisted back in on itself . . . I gritted my teeth and shoved the memory of the nightmare to the back of my mind, wondering why in hell I'd think it had anything to do with Xellos. 

"Fighting has always been more important to you than winning, hasn't it?" the Mazoku was saying to Red. "No wonder you turned traitor! But my reasons for being in Seyruun right now have nothing to do with you—or at least, only peripherally. Don't worry, I expect Beastmaster-sama will order me to find a way to get rid of you soon enough, since our operations were much smoother when we didn't have to account for your interference. But until then, I prefer not to get any holes blown in me, so . . ." Xellos waggled his hand in a little wave, and disappeared. 

Red growled, a full bass draconic sound that shouldn't have been able to come from a human throat. I could feel the ground under my feet vibrate with the force of it. There were people staring at us, too. 

"I'm going to turn that slimy little cone into a fucking lace doily and hang the remains around the neck of Ceiphied's statue in the largest temple in the city." 

"I'll hold him down for you while you punch the holes," I said. My relationship with Xellos had always been . . . odd. On the one hand, I'd called him "Papa" when I was four years old, until Aunt Filia had overheard me and put a stop to it. On the other hand, he pranked me as easily as he did anyone else. As a result, I'd grown to really hate practical jokes. He'd been a fixture around the shop, popping up irregularly, staying for anything from a few minutes to a few days, and then disappearing again. Right now, though, I was pissed off at him, and poking a few holes in him in sensitive places felt like a good idea. "In the meanwhile, we should probably get out of here before someone decides to call the guards or something." People _were_ still staring, and I was starting to think that taking a swing at Xellos in the middle of the street might not have been the best idea I'd ever come up with. 

After half a block, Red turned left down an alley, which led us to a much narrower street that dead-ended at a small square that was largely empty of people. The houses ringing it had seen better days. 

"Any ideas how to kill time for the next couple of hours?" 

"Well . . ." I fished through my pockets and came up with a brochure entitled "One Hundred Less-Famous Historical and Cultural Sites in Seyruun". 

Red laughed. "Where the fuck did you get that?" 

"Jillas," I said wryly. "But there are a couple of interesting things in it. Although this is the wrong season for us to see the ice cow—too bad." 

"Ice . . . cow?" 

I nodded, doing my best to look enthusiastic. "Every winter, the Dairy Farmers' Collective of Seyruun coats a cow statue on the north side of the city with milk and lets it freeze. Apparently the effect is . . . interesting." 

"You're shitting me." 

Now it was my turn to laugh. "I don't think I could make up something that ridiculous. See for yourself." 

I passed him the brochure, and he squinted at the tiny print for several moments. "Ice cow . . . Laughing statue . . . Mysterious object from another world . . . Who comes up with this shit, anyway?" He crumpled the thing up and tossed it over his shoulder. "What the hell. Let's poke around a bit. But not according to that thing's directions." 

And that was exactly what we did. Seyruun was a big city, with plenty of scope for just wandering the streets . . . and no particularly bad bits that we could find, which seemed to disappoint Red a little. Along the way, we discovered that he could read the Third Dynasty Elemekian inscription over the ancient door of a building which was now a library, and that he was a terrible judge of racing dogs. We bought supper from a series of street vendors, and as the sun dipped down to the horizon, we found ourselves in a park, watching a trio of kids feed crumbs of stale bread to a flock of voracious ducks. 

"When I was about that age, Xellos took me to a park with a bag of popcorn to test some stupid story about it making pigeons explode," I said. 

Red snorted. "Sounds like him. And did it?" 

"No. He was pretty disappointed." I hesitated, then asked, "Did you really think you could beat him, or were you bluffing?" 

" _He_ thought I could beat him," Red pointed out. "Would've been an interesting fight, anyway." 

I shook my head, reflecting that Xellos had been right: Red _did_ care more about the fight itself than about winning it. 

"The part I don't like is that the slimy little cone won't tell us what he's doing here," Red added. "You'd think it would be obvious, but there's no sign of any kind of upheaval here he could exploit. Nothing that wolf-bitch Zelas should be interested in. So it's still hidden, and I'd like to stop it before it gets too far." 

"That almost sounds like altruism," I said teasingly. "Not what I would have expected from you." 

"The Mazoku are trying to destroy the fucking _world_ , Val. That's their only purpose, and everything Xellos does ultimately ties back to it. And I don't know about you, but I'm kind of fond of being alive. Addicted to it, even." 

I glanced over at him, not quite sure what to make of his tone of voice. He was tracing a wandering path down his left shoulder with his right hand . . . following the line of that scar, I realized, the nasty one that made it look like someone had tried to hack him apart. 

"I'm glad." The words just slipped out. I wasn't even sure why I'd said them. 

"You should be worrying more about yourself—or do you have more practice in confronting princesses than I think you do?" 

"I've been trying hard not to think about that," I admitted. 

I continued trying not to think about it as I bedded down for the night. I should have been feeling charged up, anticipating _finally_ getting the answers I'd been waiting for all my life, but instead all I could feel was a cold knot in the pit of my stomach, and the shadow of a nameless dread. I fully expected not to sleep at all, or to sink into the usual sequence of nightmare scenes, but instead, as I dozed off, I found myself somewhere else entirely. 

I was sitting on a ledge halfway down a cliff, with my legs stretched out in front of me and variegated stone at my back. My right arm was a seething mass of agony, its soft tissues bubbling obscenely, and I had to concentrate hard to keep my breathing steady and even, but I wasn't going to give in to the pain. I had no intention of displaying any weakness in front of the man who was kneeling beside me, holding my wrist with one hand while the other rested on my shoulder. The skirts of his coat were fanned out around him, and the metal ring that restrained his red hair was resting on my knee. 

"You really did a number on it this time," he said. 

"I'm s—" 

"Not your fault," he cut me off. "Your instincts wouldn't be a problem if I'd done things right in the first place. As it stands, they're a fucking pain in the ass, but you didn't pick them any more than I picked mine. And I'm not going to abandon you. You're too valuable. You'll live to get your revenge." 

"Might be more difficult to kill off the goldens with only one arm," I said, my smile more of a grimace of bared teeth. 

"You'd regenerate . . . but I don't think I'm going to need to cut it off. Just need to unsnarl the energy flows, which are royally fucked up. It's going to hurt like a son of a bitch, though." 

"I'm read—" And then I roared full-voice, feeling my back arch, as his power dug into me before I had a chance to brace myself, straightening what had gotten inadvertently bent and twisted. For a while, the world was red with jagged black lightning flashing across it. 

I dropped back into reality with a pained cough. Fuzzily, I noted that my arm had gone back to being a recognizable dragon limb instead of a seething dark mass. I flexed it, grunted, and began to force the bits that didn't go with my otherwise-human-seeming body back to the astral side. It was more difficult than it should have been. I was so tired I was almost shaking with it. 

"Val," he said, and I stopped what I was doing so that I could turn my head and look at him. He was still kneeling, his face unexpectedly close to mine. "Don't you dare do anything that stupid again. Your power's different now from what it was. Start picking fights again before you've got it under control, and I'll beat you senseless." 

"Un-der-stood." Each syllable seemed to require a separate effort. 

"Good. Take a couple of days to feed and pull yourself together, then come and see me—I have a job for you." He leaned in a bit closer—he wasn't—he couldn't be about to—I'd been wanting him to for a while now— 

A brief caress, his hand resting on the top of my head . . . and then he rose to his feet, took a single step back, and bent space around himself, vanishing to who-knew-where. 

_I wonder what he'd do if I told him I'd really like him to kiss me._

_Fuck,_ I thought, opening my eyes on our shared inn room just before dawn. _Can this get any worse?_ At least I didn't have a boner this time, probably due to the excruciating pain I'd suffered in the dream (my hand flew to my upper right arm, but the flesh was solid, not bubbly and melting as some part of me had feared). _And what was with that crap? "I'll beat you senseless." But he wouldn't really . . . would he?_

My inadequate human nails dug into the bedding as I tried to calm myself. Maybe my mind had just concocted a stupid, warped fantasy because I was worried about tomorrow. Easiest and least embarrassing to claim that was it. 

_I don't think I should try to go back to sleep._ I'd probably find myself being confronted by something horrible if I did. Worse than Xellos in a banana slug costume, even, and I tried very hard not to remember that incident. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Taben was in bed, snoring, and Red was . . . not, but there was a good-sized figure just visible in the moonlight from the balcony. 

"Val," he greeted me in a soft rumble as I stepped outside and slid the door shut behind me. "When's the last time you got a decent night's sleep?" 

"I could ask the same of you, since it seems as though you're always awake before me." 

"I've got too much crap sloshing around in my mind for me to be able to doze off. So I gave up." 

"That bad?" 

A shrug. "It's been bothering me ever since we ran into that slimy little cone. 'No wonder you turned traitor,'" he quoted. "I can't remember who I betrayed, or why, but I can't seem to get the words out of my head." 

"He could just have been lying. He pretends he doesn't, but it's more like he sees it as cheating. He does a good rug imitation when he thinks it's important enough." 

"No, it feels right. Like being a dragon. Like the Mazoku being my enemy. It all fits together somehow, but I'm still missing too many of the fucking pieces. Maybe your princess'll know something useful." 

"She isn't my princess." I sidled a little closer to him, until I could feel the warmth of his body against my bare arm. I was regretting, for the first time, that I hadn't brought any pajama tops along when I'd left home. I'd thought at the time that there were better things to fill the limited space in my pack with, since I hadn't anticipated that I would be standing outside in the pre-dawn dimness with . . . someone I was strongly attracted to. 

Red chuckled. "That's right—she has a consort, doesn't she?" 

"Zelgadis Greywords. Another one of Lina Inverse's travelling companions." 

"That would be . . . the chimera?" Red shifted his weight, and his arm bumped mine. If he noticed, he didn't give any sign of it. 

"That's him. If it does turn out that you're enemies, please try not to kill him. I owe him a couple." 

"Hmph." There was a pink glow on the eastern horizon now, enough for me to see the way his brows knit together. "I'll do my best, but if it comes down to me or him—" 

"—you'll choose you. I wouldn't expect anything else." _I wouldn't want anything else._ I owed Uncle Zel for teaching me shamanism, but he wasn't . . . whatever Red was becoming to me. 

He was standing so close to me that I could smell dragon musk. I shifted closer still, half a step, and found him watching me as his hand slowly rose to rest on my shoulder. 

"Val, I . . ." 

"Shut up," I said unsteadily. "I . . . Please, just don't." 

_I don't want to want this. I don't want to want you. It makes everything too complicated._

_But I don't seem able to help myself._

_Maybe if I give in just once, I can get it out of my system._

I turned to face him. A light breeze was ruffling my hair and his forelock, and he was staring intently at me, brows knitted together in a frown. 

I took another half-step in toward him, leaned up, and smashed our mouths together. 

It was a brutal kiss. I bit down on his lower lip when his mouth didn't open immediately, and he growled and stabbed at me with his tongue, at the same time slamming me up against the balcony railing, one hand closing over the nape of my neck. I dug my fingers hard into his shoulder and held on, letting him flood my senses—the smell and taste of him, the clench and flex of powerful muscles under my hands, the promissory grip using inadequate human nails as a substitute for fangs, the blue eyes that held shadows and lightning in their depths, now boring into me as though to find all my secrets and yank them screaming to the surface. 

When we finally broke off, we were both breathing hard and staring at each other. The dawn light was bright enough now for me to be able to see him clearly, and all the stars had gone in. 

Red broke the spell by rolling his shoulders and saying, "Talk about crappy timing. Let's get through this morning before we try to talk about this." 

"Does that mean you don't want—?" 

"It means that I can't fucking think straight right now . . . because I _do_ want, and until just now, I didn't know how _much_ I wanted. If I have anything to say about it, you're _mine_ , Val Ul Copt." 

I squeezed the railing hard enough that I could feel the wrought iron change shape, squishing between my fingers. _I want to be with you_ and _I'll die before I let anyone own me!_ fought for dominance inside me, and I snarled my confusion, because the impulses were both so powerful they shook me right to the core. 

"Val, let it go. There's no time right now. We have an appointment right after breakfast, remember? Although why a bunch of royals would be up at the crack of dawn . . ." 

"All right," I said. _All right._ "But . . . this isn't over." 

"Of course not." Red smirked. And I'm fairly sure that the way his hand brushed against my side as I slipped past him to get dressed was deliberate. 

I was still in a daze as the five of us mounted the steps of the palace together. It was Taben who explained who we were to the guards and got us inside. I wasn't even sure why he'd tagged along—maybe just curiosity and the desire to take advantage of what might be the only chance he ever had to meet royalty—but just then I was grateful that he had. 

Red walked beside me, and I could feel a tension in him as we moved through the hallways of the palace. I didn't blame him. I would have been on edge too, if I'd known I might be walking into the middle of an enemy's stronghold. 

That idea still felt unreal to me, though. That he and Uncle Zel and Princess Amelia might be enemies. Red might not be the easiest person to get along with, but they had all fought against the Mazoku agenda of destroying the world. That should have counted for something. Shouldn't it? 

_The enemy of my enemy is my friend._ How often had I come across that line in the trashy adventure novels I'd used to be so fond of when I was a kid? But real life wasn't a novel, and trite statements are never as true as we'd like to believe they are. 

I was still trying to come to grips with the idea when the guards escorting us stopped and opened a door and announced us, but I snapped back to reality as we entered the room and I heard the sound of a sword being drawn. 

The room itself was an office, large, with a big, heavy desk at the far end. Behind it sat a beautiful, buxom dark-haired woman with a smile fading from her face. That had to be Princess Amelia, although my vague memories and the handful of pictures Aunt Filia had kept depicted her as a short-haired, spunky teenager, and not as this elegant adult. 

She had twisted in her seat to look at the man standing at her shoulder, a shortish, lithe figure with rock-studded blue skin and hair that reflected the light from the windows with a different quality than would have been considered normal: Uncle Zelgadis, unchanged from when I'd last seen him more than ten years ago. He was the one who had drawn his sword, and he was staring at Red with a cold anger the likes of which I'd never seen before. 

"Chaos Dragon Gaav," he spat. "You have a lot of nerve just walking in here! This time, I'm going to find some way of making sure that you stay dead!" 

There was a moment of frozen silence. I couldn't move. Couldn't even breathe. There was only the astral pressure in my shoulders as my wings tried to free themselves, and the tension of waiting for Red to refute the identification or for Uncle Zel to withdraw it. 

But neither of them did. 

Instead, Red threw back his head and began to laugh.


	15. Gaav

It was so fucking ironic that it almost hurt. In all the years I could suddenly remember, I had never been in a situation as bizarre and _ridiculous_ as this. Plus, I needed to hide the sudden agony in my head as my entire life slammed back into me all at once, and scrape together a few precious seconds to figure out what the fuck I was going to do. 

In the end, my fucking useless fragile human body had to stop laughing and breathe in, and I lowered my head to look at the chimera and his woman. I'd have to make this quick, make sure they didn't have time to figure out just how vulnerable I was at the moment. But at the same time, I couldn't just run away with my tail between my legs. That would have been a dead giveaway. 

"Your security sucks just as badly as it did twenty years ago," I said, sneering at them. "No wonder a pair of weaklings like Kanziel and Mazenda were able to just waltz in and take over. You're lucky that my being here really _is_ a coincidence this time, and I don't want anything to do with this fucking useless kingdom of yours." 

There was a soft sound of protest from beside me, and I deliberately turned away from the chimera to face Val. _My_ Valgaav, somehow purified of my power, of the past we'd shared . . . but in all the ways that mattered, exactly the same, strong and stubborn and proud. I had to clench my hands into fists so as not to give in to the impulse to touch him. 

"It's true, isn't it?" he said. "You _are_ . . ." Awe, confusion, anger on his face. Pain locked deep inside those golden eyes where the lost part of him was screaming in its sleep. The place inside me where our mate bond had been anchored burned and stung. Fire and shattered glass. 

He might be happier if he never remembered, but the words that might have made him hate me stuck in my throat until I had to swallow them all back down again, or choke. 

"The most effective lie is the one that the person telling it believes himself," I said at last, locking my eyes with his. "You'll be better off if you forget you ever met me." 

Then I forced myself to turn away, to separate myself from their little group and bend space around me until I was almost as far away as the world would let me get. 

I landed on my hands and knees on the roof of a hospital near the southern shore of the Demon Sea. "Shit," I whispered as my vision wavered. Since getting lumbered with Ragradia's fucking little curse, I couldn't just absorb the negative emotions my Mazoku side still fed on like a sponge—I had to concentrate actively on pulling them in. With my memory gone, I hadn't known what I needed to do to replenish my power. 

Twenty years it had taken me to make it back into the world, and I still hadn't healed from what Phibrizzo had done to me. I spat deliberately to one side, then took off my sword and settled down cross-legged. In these lands where no one knew even a simple Recovery spell, healing was more likely to fail than succeed, and even those who survived were as likely as not to pay terrible, crippling prices. There was a lot of pain and grief and despair radiating up from the building below, and while it might be as fucking tasteless as any other hospital food, it was abundant and I didn't have to work to incite it, just pull it in. 

When I opened my eyes again, the sun was much higher in the sky and there was a fucking pigeon perched on my head. It was just about enough to make me wish that Val's little story about Xellos' experiment with the popcorn— 

_No. Don't think about him. You can't afford it._ I dislodged the pigeon with a light smack that sent it flying across the roof to brain itself on a tree, stood up, and bent space again. 

It was easier this time, almost effortless, but I still missed the ability to just step through the astral that Ragradia had fucking _stolen_ from me. You couldn't move a physical body that way, though. I'd tried. So hard that I'd nearly torn myself in two. 

Like the hospital, the place where I reappeared hadn't changed much in my absence, but then who else would have any interest at all in a patch of clinker at the edge of the crater of an active volcano? It was a good place for this, though, because the likelihood of anyone ever finding any evidence of what I was about to do was tiny to the point of non-existence, and I didn't want anyone to _ever_ know just how vulnerable I was on reawakening. An ordinary arrow between the shoulderblades could finish me right now, or a mere fireball spell, if I didn't catch on and block it in time. 

Having been dead just made the prospect of it happening again even worse. 

I had to stop several times while I was drawing the circle to try to remember the details—alchemy and ritual magic had never been my strongest points, and I'd only have one chance at this. If I fucked it up, I'd die screaming my life out with no one to hear me, but at the same time, not doing it was too risky. 

I put the last few fine details in place with the point of my sword and re-scabbarded it at my back, then went over the entire damned thing again, the seals of my name and the other names and symbols and connectors. A couple of times, I had to stop and rub something out with the toe of my boot and redraw it. 

A human specializing in certain areas of magic might have recognized elements of a chimerization spell in the results, or bits of a black magic summons, and the astral power sink was common to several branches of magic, but the rest I'd put together when I'd first woken fully in a human body. The research and careful testing required had been frustrating and had indirectly caused me to kill a lot of random people who'd interrupted me at the wrong fucking moment, but the results had been worth it in the end. 

I stripped, planted myself in the center of the circle, and gritted my teeth, running the words of the activation spell through my mind, and the symbols flared blood red. Black lightning struck at me from five directions, and I grunted at the impact, because it hurt like a son of a bitch. Worse than the attack of Phibrizzo's that felled me, even, because that ended and this went on and on as the circle pulled through more and more of the energy that I only had partial access to otherwise, bathing me in waves of astral power, marinating my worthless human body in it until every particle of flesh was infused with the forces that would compensate for its physicality. 

I was bathed in sweat by the time the spell finally wore itself out, breathing in hard, shuddering gasps as the last of the black lightning crackled over my skin and grounded itself out, sucked back to the astral. I was tired, and hungry again, but I had a test to make before I went to get more hospital food. 

Most of the rocks on the ground were tiny, but I managed to find a sharp-edged chunk of volcanic glass large enough to fill my palm. I arranged it carefully in my left hand, then squeezed it with all the force I could muster. 

If I'd done it an hour ago without intentionally projecting a shield, it would have sliced through my flesh and then bitten into the bones underneath, but when I opened my hand, all I saw was a few rapidly-fading white lines across my palm. 

_Protected._ Finally. Now I could go back to Seyruun without risking my neck, and— 

Oh, _hell_ , no. What the fuck was wrong with me? Val might be in Seyruun, but he didn't remember anything, that was clear. More than that, he probably hated my guts. I'd lied to him in the worst possible way, even if I hadn't meant to. 

I snarled at the lava bubbling a hundred feet below in the caldera. Since when did I worry about other people's _feelings_ , like some fucking lovesick princess? But Val . . . 

I ground my teeth in frustration. _You slept with him_ once _! Once, in eight hundred years, so that you could establish a bond with him that wouldn't be cut off by the fucking Barrier! You never touched him at any other time . . ._ until this morning and that damned kiss that had split my lip open and made me want to grab him right there and bend him over the balcony railing and fuck him until a dozen Recovery spells weren't enough to let him walk straight. 

But that wasn't the only reason why the last ancient dragon mattered to me, and I knew it. Eight hundred years isn't _that_ much in the lifetime of someone who's been around nearly since the beginning of the world, but it's long enough to get used to someone . . . just being there. Someone who had protected me while I slept, nursed me through the fucking cold I'd caught before I got the hang of reinforcing my human immune system, and seen all the weaknesses I had never dared let a full Mazoku witness. But Val understood—he had a physical body too, and problems and weaknesses of his own. 

I'd spent years learning the best way to snap him out of flashbacks. I'd fixed his arm for him half a hundred times when his fucking dragon instincts had gotten the better of him and he'd tried to initiate a full change. And each of us had eventually figured out how to tell the other he was being an idiot without starting a pointless fight. 

It was funny, in a way—I'd given him my name, put my stamp on him, but when we were alone, he was always _Val_ , not _Valgaav_. And when he called me _Gaav-sama_ , it was as much an endearment as a mark of respect. 

My friend, my comrade-in-arms—my brother, even, the one I would have chosen instead of Dynast or fucking _Phibby_. Mine from the moment that I'd caught his soul and stuffed it back into a broken body infused with my power. Mine in a way that even my General and my Priest never had been, because Val had had a choice and they hadn't. Mine because we were _alike_ , in our own freakish way. 

Mine because he hadn't shifted his loyalty to another Dark Lord even after I'd died. I knew that in my bones. Mine _absolutely_ , mine _and no one else's!_

I realized suddenly that not only had I roared those last few words out loud, leaving them echoing over the crater, but my tail was lashing at the clinker, my wings out and spread wide in full threat display for the first time since Ragradia had cursed me with a human body and a human soul. Clever Val, for showing me the way. 

I yanked hard at the astral, and for the first time in a thousand years, felt my body expand, the brief vertigo as my vision tripled, split, and came together again as a composite whole inside my mind washing over me. I growled in satisfaction and stretched luxuriantly, bowing back until the top of my central head touched the base of my tail. To be _myself_ again, after so fucking long, might be the most precious gift that anyone had ever given me. Not that I've ever gotten a lot of presents. 

I wasn't, now that I thought about it, really all that hungry. Maybe I'd just take a nap. 

I circled a couple of times, tamping down the clinker and erasing all evidence of my spell in the process, then curled up comfortably. 

If I was lucky, I might even dream of him. Dreams were okay. Or at least they didn't put me at risk of ruining his life for him again.


	16. Val

The sound that tore itself from my throat as he vanished, half-scream and half-roar, shattered all the windows in the room and made the floor vibrate with its echo. 

I should have felt betrayed. 

Instead, it felt like he'd torn my heart out of my chest. Suffocating pain. I couldn't breathe. 

Maryuu-oh Gaav. The Devil Dragon. Chaos incarnate. And I'd fallen in love with him. More than that, I couldn't seem to take it back. 

"Val-sama!" 

I took a single deep, shuddering breath. "I'm fine, Jillas, just pissed off." 

_You'll be better off if you forget you ever met me._

And I was just supposed to _accept_ that? Like hell. 

_We were going to talk, remember, you red-haired bastard? You_ owe me _that._

First things first, though. I'd come here for a purpose. I turned to face the desk at the far end of the room. 

"Princess Amelia," I said. 

"Val-kun." Yes, her smile definitely looked forced. "Zel didn't mean to . . . I mean, he's very protective of me, and of Seyruun. And, well, I doubt you've ever seen Gaav use his full power if you didn't know who he was, but it's terrifying." 

"He just shrugs off attacks," Uncle Zel said, in a level tone that was far more characteristic of him than the earlier shouting had been. "Even the Sword of Light couldn't scratch him. He would have walked away from a full-strength Ragna Blade if Phibrizzo hadn't backstabbed him. And he tried to kill Amelia." 

Amelia's smile now became fond and warm. "That was a long time ago, Love—" Uncle Zel blushed. "—and it's kind of unjust to blame him for it, when you think about it. He was trying to save the world by stopping Phibrizzo's plans. Maybe he picked a hurtful, nasty, upside-down-and-backwards kind of way of going about it, but he _is_ a Mazoku . . . and there are humans who don't quite get that part right either. Actually, I think I'm glad he managed to survive somehow." 

"Well, I'm not," Uncle Zel huffed. "This is worse than the Hellmaster's Jar in Taforashia." 

"I didn't come here to talk about Gaav-sama," I said, then blinked as I realized what had just fallen off my tongue. Gaav- _sama_. It felt right, sounded perfectly natural. As though I'd been saying it all my life. Damn it all. And now Uncle Zel had gone all stiff again, and I couldn't read the expression in Princess Amelia's eyes. "I came here to talk about how Aunt Filia found my egg." 

Amelia exchanged another glance with Uncle Zelgadis. "I'm sorry, Val-kun. We can't tell you." 

Outrage vibrated through me. "Why in hell not? I _know_ you were there." 

"Because we promised Filia," Uncle Zel said. "All of us—Lina, Gourry, me, Amelia . . . even Xellos and Jillas and Gravos. We all felt that you'd be better off not knowing." 

"Not knowing _what_?" I snarled, all patience gone. "Did Lina Inverse murder my parents by accident while practicing her Dragon Slave? Am I the love-child of Vrabazard and Deep-Sea Dolphin? _What could possibly be so terrible that you're afraid of just telling me that it happened?_ " 

Uncle Zel shook his head. "Really, I think at this point it isn't likely to make much difference whether you know or not, but we still have to ask Filia to release us from our promise first." 

"And if she doesn't?" I demanded. 

"We'll tell you anyway," the chimera said slowly. "The broad outlines, at least. Hiding it wouldn't do any good when Gaav knows about all but the last few months—better than we do, in fact. _He_ didn't promise anything to anyone, and he might decide to tell you the story of the last ancient dragon just to spite us." 

_You really hate him, don't you._ Then again, that was a fairly normal reaction to a Dark Lord. For anyone except me, apparently. 

"What inn did she say she was staying at, Jillas?" I asked. 

"The Purp— I mean, I don't remember, Val-sama." 

I rolled my eyes. "We spotted you talking to her yesterday, Jillas. Don't even try to tell me that that was random. You must have exchanged messages." 

"I-I just remembered! It's the Purple Raven, on Sky Street." 

"You heard him," I said to the princess and the chimera. "Talk to her. Get her _permission_. I expect to hear something from you by tomorrow. We're staying at the Tipsy Berserker." 

"Val-sama, are you really supposed to order royalty around that way?" Gravos asked. "I mean, is it _allowed_?" 

"Val-kun is family," Princess Amelia said. "So it doesn't really matter." But she still looked worried about something. About me. I had a feeling that something about the things I had done, the things I had said here, tied in with whatever she didn't want to tell me. Suddenly, she shook her head. "The Hammer of Justice is a blunt instrument," she said, as though to herself. "I need to be careful how I use it." Uncle Zel put his hand on her shoulder. 

"Val-kun, if there's nothing else right now, we need to get someone in here to sweep up before the next audience," Zelgadis said, nodding toward the bits of shattered glass that had fallen inside the room. 

"All right." I didn't want to talk to them anymore anyway. 

Jillas, Gravos, and silent Taben followed me back out into the hall, where I immediately grabbed the mage by the elbow, and held him back while the two beastmen went on ahead. "You're fully Guild-trained, right? What do you know about black magic summoning spells?" 

"Enough to pass the Guild entrance exam. And enough to know that I really don't like casting them. Why?" 

"So you could summon a specific, named Mazoku, if you wanted to?" I pressed. 

"Well, yes, I supp— Wait a minute! Are you saying that you want to try to summon _him_? The Chaos Dragon?" 

"Sort of," I said. "Don't look so shocked." 

"He told you to forget about him." 

"He said I'd _be better off_ if I forgot about him. As it happens, I don't agree. And did you see his face when he said it?" 

Taben gave an exasperated sigh. "I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on to pay much attention. I mean, pardon me if I didn't exactly expect the asshole swordsman I ran into in the middle of nowhere to be a Dark Lord . . . and one who's supposed to have died more than twenty years ago, at that. It was a bit distracting. Was he sticking his tongue out at you or something?" 

"No," I said. "Nothing like that." _Would you even believe me if I said he looked lonely? Like this was tearing him apart, too?_ "Never mind. Anyway, I doubt either of us has the power to summon him to any place he doesn't want to be, but it should be possible to _reverse_ the summons and send whatever—or _who_ ever—is inside the summoning circle to his location . . . shouldn't it?" 

Taben chewed at his lower lip for a moment. "Maaaybe. You'd need to change everything, though—Chaos Words, Power Words, and the circle diagram itself. Plus, you'd be at a certain risk of turning yourself inside out, or something horrible like that. I wouldn't want to risk it." 

"I'm not asking you to do any more than help me work out the spell. Otherwise I'm going to do it by myself, and that's a lot riskier," I said, using the words to cut off the beginning of his protest. "The only other person that I know of in Seyruun who has any understanding of black magic at all is Uncle Zelgadis, and I don't think he's going to be willing to pitch in." 

"You're a stubborn, stupid dragon," Taben said. "Can you cast _any_ black spells?" 

I shook my head. "Aunt Filia wouldn't let me study them—she didn't even like me learning shamanism, and that only draws on neutral spirits. I'll pick it up as we go along." 

Taben blew out a breath. "All right, all right. I'll help you, if only because I don't think I can stop you, and I don't _like_ the idea of you turning yourself inside out. We should probably start at one of the libraries." 

And we did. When we explained to the librarians that we were researching a spell, they gave us the use of a private back room where we wouldn't disturb the other patrons, furnished with a large table and a handful of chairs. I wouldn't say it was comfortable, but it gave us plenty of room to spread out, to pile summoning-spell grimoires and massive runic dictionaries in overlapping patterns and arrange our notes, which multiplied rapidly. 

We worked through lunch—I wasn't hungry, anyway. I wanted this _done_ with already, so that the ache inside my core would go away. 

I didn't know what I was going to say to Gaav-sama when I found him again. "I love you" seemed like too much. It probably wasn't even a sentiment that a Dark Lord could accept. Mazoku fed off negative emotions; the strongest possible _positive_ emotion would probably burn him like acid. But how do you stop feeling something? Would piling other emotions on top be enough? I had plenty of anger to offer him. I'd always had plenty of that seething inside me, ever since the day I was born, welling up out of the shadows of my soul. 

He hadn't been bothered by positive emotions in his time as Red, though—at least not that I'd ever been able to tell. Certainly not the way that I'd sometimes seen Xellos affected. This morning on the balcony . . . or had there been enough lust to cushion the edges of my other feelings? Was lust even a negative emotion, when it was reciprocated by its target? 

He'd had such very lonely eyes, for those few seconds in the royal study before he'd disappeared, the rich ocean blue shadowed with an aching need. A need that had sparked an answering pain in me, a need that _I_ needed to fill. Because that was . . . that was what . . . 

I scowled and looked back down at the tangle of books and papers in front of me. That spot on my forehead, spanning the center of my hairline, stung, and I rubbed it. _I don't know what I expect from him, what he'll be willing to offer me, but there has to be something! I need something!_ We were supposed to be together, somehow, in some way. All that was left was to negotiate terms that we could both accept. 

"Are you all right?" Taben asked. "It's nearly time for supper, and you should at least try to eat something this time, or you'll be too weak to cast this." 

This? 

"I thought we still needed a new set of Power Words," I said. The circle had been first, redrawn three times with messy ink and charcoal lines and then copied cleanly onto a large sheet of paper formed from four smaller ones that we'd pasted together at the edges. Then the Chaos Words, a brief chant with twice as many crossed-out lines as useful ones. 

"I think a simple reversal will do the trick. I never expected that . . . but then, I've never done anything like this before. The original spell I presented at my Guild exam was . . . much smaller-scale." 

"Just how many spells do you need to be able to cast to complete the Guild exam?" 

Taben began to tick them off on his fingers. "One from each branch of shamanism—that's five. Of those, one must be an attack spell of at least the same level as Fireball. The Vezendi guild also required one black magic summons and one black magic attack spell, although I'm told that some branches only require one black spell of any type. Likewise, Vezendi requires that one of those spells be something that the mage has invented himself, although a lot of other Guild branches don't share that requirement. So . . . at least six spells for a minimal exam, and no more than eight for the Vezendi exam if you're unlucky enough to have your best shamanistic attack spell and your original fall under the same element. Thankfully, it's primarily a test of skill rather than power, so you don't have to cast them all on the same day—otherwise, I would never have passed, thanks to my hopeless pool capacity." 

"Huh," was all I could think of to say. "So . . . we have supper, and then find somewhere quiet, and—" 

"And I try to cram everything I can remember about black magic theory into you between now and midnight, which would be the most appropriate time to cast this. Keep in mind, it might not work the first time. Or any time. Or it might—" 

"I promise that if I manage to turn myself inside-out, I won't blame you." 

"Of course you won't—you'll be too _dead_. But _I'll_ probably blame me . . . and so will he, I'd bet, if I ever run into him again. So don't do that." 

"Stupid mage," I said. "Why would I want to leave my entire _life_ unfinished? This isn't some kind of idiotic elaborate suicide! Come on, let's go eat." 

I picked up the papers, stacked them in no particular order, folded them sloppily, and stuffed them in my pocket. Better that no record of what we'd been doing here be left behind, just in case . . . 

I stopped. Blinked. Almost laughed. So there was part of me that still thought Aunt Filia had the ability to see through walls and read my mind. No. She wouldn't know about this until I was already gone. Probably not until I was already back. If I came back. 

Given the choice between Gaav-sama and the information I'd come here looking for, I would choose the Chaos Dragon without a second thought. The knowledge was . . . weirdly elating. I belonged with him—belonged _somewhere_ for the first time in my life. Not in a household full of liars, or in a town that gave me no space to spread my wings. _He_ was my home. 

Maybe he'd been the one to find my egg. That would make an odd sort of sense. Dragonets often bond to those we encounter while we're still inside the shell, and it isn't unusual for us to choose one such person over the others. Aunt Filia had thought it had been her. _I'd_ thought it had been her, but I understood now that that level of connection had never existed between us. 

"Stupid dragon, am I going to have to force-feed you, too?" 

I bared my teeth at Taben, then at the meat pie in my hand. "Just you try, little mage. Just you try." The pie flooded my mouth with warm, beef-flavoured juices as I bit into it. 

We left the city together at twilight and used Levitation spells to fly over the darkening countryside, looking for an appropriate place to set up the spell without risking interference from the protection ward that encompassed all of Seyruun. It took us more than an hour to find a rocky outcrop with a nice smooth surface to draw the circle on. And then we sat there with a light spell dancing over our heads as Taben attempted to explain black magic to me. 

"We talk about it as channelling the power of the Mazoku, but for a lot of spells it's more like gathering up the basic power of negative emotions. So a black sorcerer with any reasonable level of talent is like a mini-Mazoku in his own right." 

"That can't be true of the spells that call on a specific Mazoku's name, though," I said. 

"Well, no, those do seem to draw directly from that Mazoku's power, but no one knows whether they're active participants in the relationship or we're just siphoning off bits of energy that escape them involuntarily, like shed flakes of skin. You may be in a unique position to find out the answer to that—and one of the other enduring questions of black magic too, for that matter: why is there only one spell that calls on Maryuu-oh Gaav, when all the other Dark Lords have two? Come to think of it, I wonder if the Gaav Flare works again now? Theoretically it should, I suppose, but I never learned the incantation . . ." 

"Maybe you _should_ learn it—he might be the only Mazoku who would willingly give any of his power up to someone like you," I said, with a crooked smirk. 

"I'm not sure I'd dare cast it," Taben admitted. Then, in a lower tone of voice. "He scared me, Val. When he started to laugh . . . that wasn't the man who saved me from the fire, or the one who drank Gravos under the table, or even the one who killed that Mazoku outside Chessen. I could feel his power pressing against my mind, like some giant black shadow. I nearly wet myself." 

I snorted. "Try this." And I closed my eyes and sort of _pushed_ at my power, a crude announcement of the presence of a very strong dragon to any astral being that might be lurking nearby. 

"What the hell was that? What did you do? Oh, Ragradia . . ." Taben made a choking noise. "I think I'm going to be sick." 

"I flared my power on the astral," I explained. "Normally it's a Mazoku thing, but I picked it up from Xellos when I was still a hatchling. I think you're just abnormally sensitive to astral energies—for a human, that is—so when Gaav-sama suddenly came back to himself and got his energies back under conscious control, he sort of . . . body-slammed you in the spirit. It wasn't because he's a Dark Lord . . . or, well, not exactly." 

"That's a relief, I guess. Although he gave me a headache, and you didn't." 

"Well, he _is_ a couple of orders of magnitude more powerful than I am." Ancient dragons were the most powerful _naturally_ embodied creatures that had ever been, but that (according to Xellos) only put me on the same level as a mid-ranked Mazoku. 

"I suppose he would be." 

We sat in silence for several minutes. I snuffed my Lighting spell, leaving only Taben's much dimmer one, and looked up at the stars, trying to gauge the time. Later than I'd thought. 

I rose to my feet, pulled the lump of chalk we'd bought out of my pocket, and began to draw. First the outer circle, as wide as I could make it when I had to both pin the end of the string that would constrain the arc to the rock myself, and work the chalk along. Then the inner circle, with a diameter about eight inches smaller. I went over them a second time freehand to ensure that there were no gaps, drew the star inside to complete the basic pentagram, and then began to fill in the details, referring back to the diagram Taben and I had worked out at the library. Gaav's sigil at each point of the star, first, then runic markers of connection and dismissal and transport. The pattern that would send me to him, if I dared. 

And I _would_ dare, I thought, snarling at empty space. _No one_ was going to choose my future for me, not even Gaav-sama himself. I refused to be afraid. 

I rechecked the pentagram one last time, to make sure I hadn't smudged it, before straightening up. The stars glittered coldly above me, and the least thread of a moon had risen. _Now._ I pocketed the chalk and held out my hand to Taben, who passed me my lance. I grounded the weapon beside my feet and took a deep breath. 

"You opener of the ways, who guards all paths within chaos' span—" I felt the tingle of energies engaging and saw the pentagram beneath my feet flare golden. "Grant me the key and convey me to the place where the Lord of the Dark spreads his wings proudly beneath the endless sky!" The gold trembled, became stained with red that suddenly flared upward, encasing me inside a pillar of blood-coloured light that blotted out everything around me. " _Finite Departure!_ " 

They were ridiculous Power Words, and I felt like an idiot declaiming them, but they did the job. Red flared, dissolved into twisting black . . . and then it was daylight, and very hot, and I was falling. 

" _Levit—_ " Something grabbed onto me in midair, and I choked, held up by the collar of my shirt for half a second before giant red talons closed around me and lifted me. An equally large head, more lizard-like than either my own or Aunt Filia's in dragon form, surveyed me coolly with familiar blue eyes. 

"Do you realize just how fucking stupid that was?" His voice seemed to come from all around me, and I realized there was a second head hovering above my left shoulder, and a third somewhere below and to the right. 

"If you hadn't run out of there like your tail was on fire, I wouldn't have _had_ to do anything stupid!" I snapped, glaring at the Chaos Dragon's middle head. 

"I tried to warn you, Val." He smelled like dragon musk and hot metal—not a scent that would have attracted a human, but I liked it very much. A little _too_ much, maybe, considering the growing tent in my pants. "You're better off not getting involved with me." 

"Better off according to _who_? I finally find the one place in this world where I _belong_ , and you expect me to just let you walk away? Like _hell_!" 

"Val, I . . ." A long pause, during which we stared at each other. Then he sighed. "You know what? I give up. It's too much fucking work to get rid of you. Especially since I don't want you to go. And because I wouldn't have any interest in you at all if you weren't strong enough to fight for what you want." 

Suddenly, I felt _warm_ and _wet_ against the back of my neck, and, twisting, I discovered that the head that had been above me had crept just enough closer to touch its tongue to the most vulnerable spot on my body, where a vital nerve bundle lurked directly beneath the skin of my dragon form. It was a tease and a turn-on, and I snarled at him as he narrowed his eyes and dropped his lower jaw in a dragon grin. 

"You taste as good as you smell." 

"You son of a bitch!" 

"Hn." A different tongue flickered over the back of my hand, and then one of them caressed my ear. It was like being attacked by an octopus, but I knew that if I squirmed too much, he'd lose his grip and I'd fall again. "I missed you too." 

Before he could renew his attack, I grabbed his thumb-claw, planted my feet, and pushed myself into an almost-upright position for a better look around. 

The first thing I saw, of course, was him: the broad red wings, naked and leathery like a golden's, the whippy tail, and the heavy, muscular torso necessary to support all those necks and heads. He was easily the largest dragon I had ever seen, healthy and sleek now, with a line of shining ice-white scales twisting around the base of his left wing and running down his body to mark that damnable scar, an imperfection that should never have been there. 

My peripheral vision took in other things as well—the dark gravel, the crater, the lava bubbling deep down below. 

"I was right," I said. 

"Hmmm?" 

"You're magnificent in this form." 

He chuckled. "Bet your ass I am!" 

"You're also almost as vain as Xellos." 

A soft growl. "That slimy little cone? You're comparing me to _him_?" 

"Only in passing, Gaav-sama. You're much more than he could ever be." 

"Hmph. I suppose I should put you down. Having you at my mercy's fun enough, but the size differential doesn't make things easy for conversation or for sex . . . Heh, you're almost as red as I am, with a lot less excuse. You're no shrinking virgin." 

"Shrinking no, virgin yes," I admitted, and his talons froze while I was still a good five feet above the dark ground. "I was waiting for you," I added. 

"I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or fucking worried. Here." 

I hopped down out of his hands and onto the gravel, which was uncomfortably warm even through the soles of my shoes. 

Gaav-sama reared up and then shrank in on himself. I watched in fascination as his heads combined themselves together in glowing red silhouette—how did that work, anyway? Since he was able to act and speak through all three heads in a coordinated way, they had to share consciousness. It had to feel pretty bizarre. Regardless, he was soon standing before me in that familiar human shape, smirking . . . and quite naked. 

"Had to strip down for other reasons, and then couldn't be arsed to change back," he said. "Just a second, then we'll get out of here." 

I forced myself to turn away as he padded over the gravel toward the stack of clothes perched on a boulder. I knew that if I didn't, I'd find myself admiring his body, and if I did that too much, I might have a hard time coordinating myself well enough to walk. He was magnificent regardless of his form—not pretty, but like a force of nature, a storm or a dangerous wild animal. 

He wasn't quite completely dressed when he came back towards me—he'd left his coat open in front, and stuffed his sword under his arm rather than putting the harness on. Maybe he wanted to be away from here as much as I did. 

He didn't give me any warning, either, just stopped beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. The world twisted, and I smothered a startled yelp as we went from the top of the volcano to a more dimly lit indoor space. I also sneezed violently, because it was dusty. Then Gaav-sama waved his hand, and suddenly it wasn't . . . although the air did smell a bit burnt. 

"Guess the fucking cleaning golem fell apart again while I was gone," he said. "Stupid thing always had trouble hanging together for twenty minutes, never mind twenty years. Everything else seems okay, though." 

I looked around, curious. We were in a room carved from seamless stone, with a high, vaulted ceiling and an entire wall of arched windows that seemed to be covered on the outside with a thick layer of something translucent that let a modest amount of light through. Despite the size of the room, it was sparsely furnished: an oval table stood in front of a window not far from us, and a leather-upholstered bench wrapped around three sides of it. There were archways in the three unwindowed walls. An empty brandy bottle and two glasses, one lying on its side, were positioned precisely in the middle of the table. 

I went to the window and laid my hand against the glass, which turned out to be freezing cold. 

"Ice," Gaav-sama said from behind me. "It's about three feet thick. We're less than twenty miles from the south pole here." 

I turned back to face him. "And this is your home? Where you live?" I corrected myself, not sure whether the concept of "home" applied for Mazoku. "Or your base of operations?" 

"No, you were right the first time—I kept my base of operations on the astral and moved it around for convenience, but what happened to me at the end of the Kouma War put me in a bad spot. I needed a place other Mazoku couldn't find, somewhere I could risk sleeping without expecting to wake up the next morning with fucking Gorun Nova sticking up from between my shoulderblades. This had been vacant since before the Shinma War, and from the outside it isn't obvious it exists. Perfect for what I wanted." He was watching my face intently as he spoke. 

"And you trust me enough to let me in here?" I asked, testing. Challenging. 

A shrug. "If _you're_ going to stab me in the back, I'd be a lot happier if you just got it over with." 

I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, so I meandered over to the nearest archway, which opened onto a hallway lined with doors. Stone doors, on worn metal hinges. I prodded one open and discovered an empty room, with a single arched window and a few bits of shelving. 

"Try the one on the left at the far end of the hall," Gaav-sama said, still watching me with all his attention. It made me a bit uncomfortable, because it made this feel like some kind of test. 

I walked to the end and stopped opposite the door he'd indicated. When I touched the handle, magic fizzed along my nerves, and I yanked my hand back just as the door clicked and opened an inch or so on its own. I tapped it the rest of the way open with the toe of my shoe, and stepped inside. 

Well, _this_ room wasn't empty, anyway, although it had the same basic shape as the first one I'd checked. It had been someone's bedroom, from the looks of it. The bed itself was an awkward unmade pile of linens and plain woolen blankets, with a metal frame supporting the mattress, and a chest sat at its foot. There was a rug on the floor, its pattern faded and worn into indistinguishability. The door half-hid a rack of spears and lances, well-worn unmagical weapons. A heavy desk, with scarred, gouged legs and char marks along one edge, crouched in a corner in the company of a chair with a high, carved back. Shelves above it held the usual things, ink sticks and bowls and bottles and pens and brushes and blank paper and a couple of books. There were more books crowded onto extra shelves that had been built against the end-wall of the room, and although I couldn't read the titles from where I was standing, there was something odd about some of them, and I padded across the room to find out what. 

At first I couldn't figure it out—they weren't written in some foreign alphabet, or anything. Then I actually read one of the titles, and felt my breath stop in my chest. 

_Annals of the Fourth Generation of Elders, as Transcribed from the Archives of the Ancient Dragons by Mirdath En Calz._

It was written in Ryugo, the language dragons had spoken since the beginning of time, but the letters were angular and far less ornate than those in the golden dragon primers Aunt Filia had used to teach me the language. I'd always hated those, and now I knew why: this was the way Ryugo was supposed to be written. 

There weren't that many of those books—maybe forty, some of them charred or crumbling, sandwiched in between manuals of arms and a stack of trashy adventure novels whose paper covers were starting to yellow from age. But together they represented more information on ancient dragons than I'd realized still existed. 

I turned around slowly. Gaav-sama was still standing in the doorway. 

"Whose room was this?" I demanded. 

"Yours." 

The one-word reply sent a wave of cold fizzing over my skin. I wasn't sure whether it had been my greatest hope or my worst fear, but at least now it was out in the open. 

"Tell me the story of the last ancient dragon," I said, meeting his eyes. 

A soft sigh. "You'd better sit down, then, because it isn't short." 

I sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress was firm, designed to take a transformed dragon's extra weight. Gaav-sama took the desk as his perch, laying his sword beside him and frowning. 

"I wasn't absolutely sure until the astral lock on the door recognized your signature—even changed as it is without the Mazoku elements—and opened for you. Until then, there was a slim possibility that you could have been a clone, or even the son of the Val I remember, although the resemblance would have been pretty fucking exceptional, and I don't know what the hell he—you—would have bred with. So I've got to assume you were hit with some kind of time-reversal spell. Fucking golden dragons probably thought it would be kinder than killing you." 

My forehead prickled, and I mumbled a curse and rubbed it. I was caught between yelling at him to hurry up and just _tell_ me already, and asking him to stop. _Mazoku elements._ _Time-reversal spell._ Things that I needed to, didn't want to, _needed_ to hear. 

"The last of the ancient dragons hid themselves in the Western Desert," Gaav-sama began again. "About a dozen of them, I think—I remember you mentioning eight, nine names, but you never liked to talk about it much. It was a total fucking coincidence I was near there the night the goldens found them. I'd taken to wandering around back then to make it more difficult for the others to find me, since I wasn't exactly welcome among other Mazoku . . . or humans or dragons, for that matter. Anyway, I was just minding my own business when a bunch of Laser Breath started to go off above my head. A couple of minutes later, a half-dead ancient in human form came tumbling down a dune and just about landed on my boots." 

A fragment of nightmare snapped into focus—falling, scrambling through the desert, bleeding, my ribs shrieking in pain, following that ominous half-hidden presence. _Real_ , like the parts about the massacre had been real. 

"You actually tried to kill me," Gaav-sama added with a grin. "Even with a body half smashed to junk, you had balls the size of cantaloupes. I liked that. I liked it a lot. And I recognized something of myself in you. So I offered you a chance at survival: to die and be reborn as a Mazoku. You jumped at it, just like I figured you would." 

_Steel through my chest, the warmth of his arms, and a pain so intense it became a strange kind of pleasure . . ._ The flash of memory was harrowing, agonizing, and weirdly cathartic. _Real. All real._

"You used to have a horn there. Right where you're rubbing. You got it caught on stuff all the time at first. It's surprising you didn't blister the walls in here with some of the things you said." 

"It stings sometimes," I admitted. "I wasn't . . . stable, was I, as a Mazoku?" My left hand drifted up to grip my right bicep. 

Gaav-sama's eyes narrowed. "You remember?" 

"I have dreams sometimes. Have had since before I hatched. You were in some of them, but I never saw your face or heard your name." 

"Huh. That's . . . Fuck, I don't know how that would even work." A pause. "No, you weren't stable as a Mazoku. I underestimated just how badly your dragon energies would react with the power I gave you—if someone else had turned you, I don't think you would have survived at all, but I'm dragon-like enough that the two halves of you eventually managed a truce. If you'd been able to integrate everything properly, you would have been able to squish that slimy little cone Xellos like a bug. As it was, you and he were about equal. You were the better fighter, though, for all that I had to teach you to throw your first punch." 

"The ancient dragons were pacifists," I said. "Or at least, that's what Aunt Filia always said. I don't know if it's true." 

"True enough. It's what got the rest of them killed." 

My hand tightened around the shaft of my lance where it rested beside me on the bed. _So fucking stupid._

"How long was I with you, before . . . ?" _Before you died?_

"Eight and a half centuries, give or take." A long pause. Then, "You were my right hand, more so than the General and Priest I'd made for myself. More than that, you were the friend, the brother-in-arms I wouldn't have known how to ask for and probably didn't deserve. Fuck, I can't believe I'm actually _saying_ all this. It was always . . . just understood." 

I felt it settle into my bones. Saviour, teacher, best friend, big brother. My partner. _Yes._ I'd been right—I belonged with him. 

But there was one more thing that I needed to know. "And your mate?" 

"That part of our relationship . . . was even more fucked up."


	17. Gaav

How the fuck did I even tell him about this without looking and feeling like a total idiot? Val was sharp. He always had been. Which meant he was going to latch onto the bits I wanted to leave out like a bulldog, and worry at them until they came loose. Unless I came up with some kind of distraction. That wasn't a permanent solution, of course, but maybe, just _maybe_ it would hold him long enough for some more of his memory to fill in. I did _not_ want to have to explain the facts of life, Mazoku-style, to him a second time. 

I slid off the desk and went over to the wall of books. Val-as-Valgaav had had a wide range of interests, and not all of them overlapped with mine, so there were a couple of false starts before I found the book with his notes still sticking out from between the pages. I opened the book to that spot before passing it to him. Val took it and looked down at it, frowning. 

"A few months before my fucking little monster of a brother took me out of commission, you came to me with an idea," I said. "I'd been slipping in and out of the peninsula where we fought the Kouma War now and again, when it looked like something on the inside needed my attention . . . but even for us, that area was completely cut off from the rest of the world. There was no communication between the inside and the outside—even the bond of obedience between Mazoku, although it wasn't broken, couldn't be manipulated across the Barrier. It pissed you off beyond belief, and you spent a quarter of a century searching for some form of energy that _would_ be able to pass through, until you thought you'd found it." 

"The dragon mate bond," Val muttered. He had some of the papers spread out on the bed and was tracing a diagram with his forefinger. "That isn't all that's here, though—I don't remember enough to recognize what it _is_ , but I know that much." 

"No, that isn't all that's there. The other half was designed to transfer a portion of my power to you along the bond if . . . anything went very wrong. I was never happy going up against Phibby—never could figure out how the little shit thinks. Thought," I corrected myself, and felt my mouth twist into a grin, because I was here and the fucking little shit wasn't. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I kind of wonder if it might not have made you even more unstable somehow, when all that energy hit. Anyway, I agreed to do the . . . spell, ceremony, whatever you want to call it, with you. Figured it had about one chance in three of working. We were both a bit surprised when the magical part of it went off without a hitch." 

"But the non-magical part didn't?" 

I raised my eyebrows. "I'd never had sex with anyone I cared about before, and you'd never had sex at all—what do you think happened?" 

"A screwing screw-up? I assume we did sort it out, though. Eventually. Since mutual orgasm is a requirement for the bond to take, if I'm understanding this right." He gestured to the book and the diagrams. 

I sighed. "Yes, we did sort it out. Eventually." 

" . . . Gaav-sama?" 

"What?" 

"You're blushing." 

" _The hell I am!_ " I thundered. 

Val just grinned. "Look in the mirror and see for yourself." 

I ground my teeth, just a little, and deliberately turned my back to the small mirror fixed to the inside of the door. My face _was_ feeling a bit hot. 

"A couple of days after the ceremony, I left," I said, staring at the far corner of the bookshelves. "I still hadn't sorted out . . . what I wanted to do, although I could tell that I was getting . . . extremely possessive of you. I was going to talk to you when I got back, see what we could sort out. I didn't expect it to take twenty fucking years!" 

"I doubt I did either," Val said. And yawned. 

"How long since you got any sleep?" I demanded, my eyes snapping back to his face. 

"Since I woke up and went out to find you on the balcony at the inn this morning. Feels like forever ago." 

"That was _yesterday_ morning," I corrected him. "Twenty-six hours. You should go to bed, at least for now." We could arrange things later so that he didn't have to waste so much time on eating or sleeping—even as a pure dragon, he should have enough astral energy to saturate his system as I'd done to myself earlier today—but now wasn't the time. 

Val knuckled his eyes. "Gh. Maybe you're right. It's been a complicated day, and a nap should help me get it all straightened out in my head." 

I touched his shoulder, just lightly. It was such a damned relief to have him right _there_ , to be able to touch him. It even made the still-shattered bond inside my head hurt less. _If he gets his memory back, will it reconnect itself? Or is he going to be stuck with the same kind of broken mess?_

"Don't dream," I told him—a suggestion, a warning . . . maybe even a bit of a joke. 

"Yeah," he said, with a wry grin. "Good night, Gaav-sama." 

I grabbed my sword, then left the room and closed the door quietly behind me as he began to straighten out his blankets. 

I wasn't tired myself—the siesta I'd taken in dragon-form would be enough to last me three or four days—but I went to my own room anyway. Easier to brood where I knew I wouldn't be interrupted. 

Nothing had changed much, not that I would have expected it to. The light was starting to fail outside—days were short here this time of year—and I lit the lamps with a wave of my hand, then hung sword and coat on their pegs beside the door and shucked off my boots. I'd have to replace the makeshift sword harness with the one hanging from another peg in the corner, but not right now. 

I'd been more careful of the carpet covering the floor than Val had been with his, more generous with my preservation spells, so the nap was still thick under my feet as I padded over to the bed and flopped down among the furs that covered it. 

_Home._ Mazoku weren't supposed to have them, Val had been uncertain about using the word . . . but I wasn't pure Mazoku anymore. Phibrizzo used to claim that I never had been, that of all of us, I was the closest to being _alive_ , a word he'd always sneered as though it were the worst obscenity. I'd had to put up with it, too, because we were almost exactly equal in power and the others . . . well, if Phibby and I had gotten into a real fight, Dolphin would have made popcorn, Dynast would have tried to stab us both in the back, and Zelas would have found some way to do both at once. 

And now Phibby was gone and I was still here. Which meant that unless old Ruby-Eye managed to recombine, the most powerful Mazoku in the world was the one dragging a human soul around with him like a fucking ball and chain. The irony was enough to make me laugh. 

Of all my siblings, Zelas was the only one who might have appreciated the joke. The wolf-bitch had always had a well-developed sense of humour. Not like Dynast, who spent so much time with an icicle up his ass, or Dolphin, with her addiction to horrible multilingual puns, and sure as hell not like Phibby. 

What the hell was Zelas up to, anyway? She didn't send Xellos anywhere casually, and I'd never known her to give him more than a few hours of free time. Something was going on in Seyruun, and I didn't think it had anything to do with me. I was a side issue. Xellos might even have classed me as harmless, since I'd been amnesiac and power-starved when we'd run into each other. For all my show of confidence, if I'd tried to fight him then, it would have been on nearly equal terms. Thank Ruby-Eye I hadn't realized it. 

Regardless of what was going on, I was going to have to figure out a way to stop it, because whatever Zelas had planned, it was bound to be bad news by my standards. 

From here on out, it was going to be just me and one impossibly loyal ancient dragon against the entire world. Me and Val. And I was going to have to train him up again—his showing in the arena in Aquen might have been impressive to the humans, but compared to the level he'd achieved as Valgaav, it was a travesty. He couldn't even rely on his old reflexes, because his abilities as a dragon weren't the same as those he'd possessed as a Mazoku hybrid. And even if he asked me to, I wasn't going to change him again without figuring out what had gone wrong the first time and making damned sure it didn't happen again. 

I was through relying on normal Mazoku. The ones who had stuck with me despite my disgrace had been ambitious, or pathetic, or so closely bound to me that they couldn't leave while I remained alive. Rashatt, my General, had hated me because of that. I'd always suspected he'd been the one who somehow poisoned me, about thirty years before the end. I'd only survived because of the way I'd reinforced the useless lump of flesh I was forced to cart around, and even so, I'd spent a very bad couple of days puking my guts out while Val did his best to tend to me. It would have been nice if we could have just cast Dicleary on me and have it work itself out that way, but a lot of white magic doesn't work quite right on me, physical body or no physical body. 

It was remarkable how little Val had changed, even with so much of his memory missing. Being reborn hadn't made him one bit less proud or less aggressive. I smirked. No, he wasn't intended for a soft life, that one. If he had been, he wouldn't have chosen me a second time, when he'd been free to do anything at all with his life. 

My mind flashed back to that kiss on the balcony of the inn in Seyruun, and I smiled and shook my head. Direct and forceful, that was my Val, and I allowed myself to become lost in a fantasy of how it might have continued if I'd allowed it. 

_Keeping him pinned against the rail, I bent him back again so that I could nuzzle his throat, licking and nibbling as I ground our lower bodies together, feeling his erection pressing against mine. His eyes widened slightly—I guess he hadn't thought before about just how big a dick proportional to my body would be when it got hard—and I smirked at him. He smirked back . . . and wrapped one leg around my calf and gave my shoulder a hard push._

_It wasn't enough to actually trip me, but I had to move my other foot a couple of inches to maintain my stance, and he took advantage of that moment of unbalance to slip away from between me and the rail, giving himself more freedom of movement. He was grinning, eyes sparkling, as he ran his hand down my bare chest, callus from his weapons-work rubbing over an exposed nipple. I growled and yanked him back in toward me, and he came without a fight, pulling my head down for another kiss. This time he didn't bite me, instead letting my tongue probe deep inside his mouth until he let out a hungry moan. I slid my hand in between our bodies and stroked him through his trousers, and he ground shamelessly against my hand._

_He was the one who pushed his waistband down and gave me full access to his body, stepping out of his clothes and standing naked in the light of the sunrise. He no longer bore the scar of my sword, but my fingers found their way to where it had been, feeling his heart pumping beneath the ribs, the quickness of his breath._

_His hands found my belt. "Your turn," he said with the smirk as he unbuckled it and unlaced the front of my trousers and pulled me out. "You could kill people with something this size, you know," he said, weighing my cock in his hand._

_"Jealous?" I asked, smirking._

_He chuckled. Ran his thumb over the head in a swirling motion that made me hiss and tremble with the need to thrust. "No, just thinking that it fits you exactly. And no one else could get away with it."_

_"Mmm." I bent my head to his shoulder again, licking and teasing at his skin. I couldn't get enough of him—of the way he tasted, the way he smelled . . . the way his muscles shivered under my touch as he gasped and began to stroke me with a shaking hand. I slung an arm under his ass and lifted him, raising him to my own level._

_"Like this," I said, gathering his cock against the palm of my hand and curling my fingers over his. I felt a long shudder run through me as he shifted his grip so that we rubbed together._ Perfect _._

_"Kiss me," he demanded. "Don't want anyone to hear . . . Mmm . . ."_

"Val," I whispered aloud. I'd long since opened my pants and taken myself in hand, pretending that my fingers were his—slenderer, calloused in a different pattern, but just as strong. "Mine. _Mine._ Finest jewel of my hoard, other half of my soul . . ." . . . and the only person in my life who could inspire me to fucking _poetry_ , not that he was ever going to find that out. 

The growl built in my throat as the pressure built in my balls, and when the image of Val in my head bent forward to kiss the tip of my cock, I came hard across my hand and leg and some of the furs, the walls of the room reverberating to the sound of my voice. 

I shook my head as I cleaned myself off, reflecting that the dragon parts of my nature had been coming to the fore an awful lot lately. _His fault,_ I thought with a smile. When I was with Val, I wanted to understand him, and even as a hybrid the dragon had always been an important part of his nature. 

For now, I was going to have to put my thoughts of him aside, though, and consider our next move . . . when the game involved at least three sides and I couldn't see most of the others' pieces. _Fuck._


	18. Taben

"What do you mean he isn't here?!" The scaly golden tail lashed, nearly knocking over the washstand in the confines of our not-terribly-large inn room. I rescued the pitcher and basin and set them on Val's vacant bed. 

"I mean he isn't here, ma'am." I was trying to be polite, but it was difficult when you had a golden dragon on the edge of a rampage blundering through your room. 

"Then where is he?!" 

"Filia, calm down!" Prince Consort Zelgadis Greywords looked just as tired as I felt. "I'm sure he's fine, wherever he is." 

_Better get it over with,_ I told myself. "If everything worked out as we intended, then he's with Gaav. Wherever _he_ is." 

Filia went white. "W-with _Gaav_?" She tottered two steps backward and fell, tail and all, onto a bed, then startled up and scrambled away, her expression disgusted—I suppose she must have figured out somehow that it was the one Gaav had been using. This time her tail _did_ send the vacant washstand to the floor with a loud crash. 

"With him turning up alive, it was bound to happen sooner or later," Zelgadis said. "I always did think that Valgaav had more than just a master-servant relationship with the Chaos Dragon. None of Gaav's _other_ subordinates went crazy and almost succeeded in destroying the world after he died." 

"This is what you made everyone promise not to tell Val," I said. _Almost succeeded in destroying the world?_ In an odd way, I could believe it of the young dragon. He was aggressive, and if he thought it was important, he would find a way no matter what risks he had to take. "Why?" 

"Because I didn't want it to happen _again_!" Filia burst out. "He had such a difficult life . . . everyone he loved or trusted dead . . . Making him remember that after he'd been given a second chance would have been cruel. I just wanted him to be happy," she said. 

"'Happy—in a cage of lies?'" I quoted out loud, and Filia flinched. "The more you talk, the more I'm sure that you never really knew Val." 

"We've been trying to tell her that for years," said a voice from over near the door. Jillas walked in, followed by Gravos, who carefully shut the door behind them. "She wouldn't ever listen," the bigger beastman added. 

"Val-sama wasn't meant to settle down," the fox-man said. "He's a fighter, Filia-sama, and Gaav-sama was always the most important person in his life. And he never did completely lose his past." 

"He never told me that," Filia said. 

"He didn't know. Not really. But when he was really, really small, he used to come to me when he had nightmares. Same ones, over and over again. He didn't understand 'em, but knowing his history made it kind of obvious he was dreaming bits of Valgaav-sama's life, poor little tyke. And I dunno what 'mated' means for dragons, but it was obvious he missed Gaav-sama something fierce." 

Filia fainted dead away. Zelgadis caught her with a grunt and eased her down to the floor. 

"What did I say?" Jillas asked tearfully. "Filia-sama . . ." 

"It was one shock too many, I think," Zelgadis said in a low voice. "I'm not entirely sure what 'mated' means for dragons either, but from what I've read, it's a lot more than human marriage—a magic-reinforced, exclusive, and permanent binding. The consequences are so powerful and so inescapable that most dragons settle for . . . lesser relationships." 

"Then if Val and Red— _Gaav_ —" I corrected myself (it was still just too peculiar to think that I'd been travelling with a Dark Lord. Legends weren't supposed to snore or drink beer or get ticked off when their boots leaked.) "—really are mated . . ." 

"I doubt they are," Zelgadis said. "I can't see Gaav limiting himself that way, and would it even take on a Mazoku, even one with a true form that's a lot like a dragon's? But . . . if they really are . . . Filia is going to have to come to terms with it in her own way." 

I eyed the unconscious dragon on the floor. So far, Filia didn't seem to have done a very good job of coming to terms with _anything_ , as far as I could see. 

"In dragon terms, Filia is only the equivalent of a human sixteen or seventeen," Zelgadis said. "It's . . . kind of young to become a single mother. Amelia and I were in our twenties when we adopted one of her cousins so that she'd have an heir, and we weren't really ready either. It's easy for new parents to make mistakes. I think it might be even easier to mess up when it's so important that everything be perfect . . . No one was expecting Val to mature so fast. It's almost as though there was something driving him to return to the physical age he was when . . . well." 

"Lord Graywords—" I began. 

The chimera held up his hand. "Just Zel. 'Sir Zelgadis', if you want to be really formal, but I don't think we need that here." 

"I'm sorry. I just assumed that since you were married to a princess, you would have some kind of title." 

"My marriage to Amelia exists in a sort of limbo-state designed to ensure that I can never inherit the throne. It's only because Phil—King Philionel—practically forced it through that we were able to marry at all. Ennobling me wouldn't have made me one bit less a chimera, so there was no point." 

"Oh." 

"What were you about to say?" 

"I was wondering if you would tell me Val's story. I mean . . . You never promised not to tell me, did you? And I never promised not to tell him . . . so when he comes back, I should be able to pass everything on to him without you technically breaking any of your promises." 

"You seem awfully certain that he's going to come back." 

I shrugged. "I can't see him abandoning Gravos and Jillas. And Gaav seemed bothered by the fact that Xellos was in town. I think they'll be coming back to look into that, if nothing else." 

"That . . . garbage Mazoku . . ." Filia grumbled at the floorboards. She heaved herself up onto an elbow. "What happened?" 

"You collapsed when Jillas suggested that Gaav and Valgaav might have been mated," Zelgadis said. 

"I . . . do seem to remember that. I think I need some tea," the golden dragon added. 

"Sounds like a good idea to me," I said. "There's a tea shop a few doors down—we can go there." 

I don't think the tea shop in question had ever seated a party composed of a sorcerer, a chimera, two beastmen, and a pretty, white-robed young woman with a tail, and there was a bit of flustered running back and forth before they found a private room to accommodate us. A large pot of tea, five cups, and plates of cookies and scones and little crustless sandwiches were produced before we were left alone. 

"Taben, how did you learn that Xellos was here in Seyruun?" Zelgadis asked. 

"He approached me," I said. "We spoke briefly. I didn't find out he was a Mazoku until Val and Gaav identified him afterwards." 

"What did he talk to you about?" 

I frowned. "Mostly about myself—my recent history and future plans." 

"And he came to me right after that horrible debacle on the palace steps. He said Zelas had ordered him to investigate some odd energies that seemed to be coming from Seyruun, and asked me a bunch of questions, mostly about Red—Maryuu-oh Gaav, that is." Filia grimaced with distaste. 

"So he suspected about Gaav," Zelgadis said. "If it were anyone but Xellos, I might even think that was all it was: an attempt to recruit the Chaos Dragon back to the Mazoku side. But this _is_ Xellos. He never does anything straightforward." He sighed, staring gloomily into his tea. "I wish Lina were here. She'd know how to get to the bottom of us." 

"And eat you out of house and home and probably blow up half the city," Filia said tartly. 

"There is that," Zelgadis admitted. "Still, given a choice between blowing up half the city and destroying half the world . . ." 

I blinked. "It can't be that bad." A pause, during which Zelgadis and Filia looked grim and the two beastmen looked mostly confused. "Can it?" 

Zelgadis shrugged. "We've got some kind of plot that involves, one way or another, the Lesser Beast, the Chaos Dragon, the last ancient dragon, and Lina Inverse, since I'm going to have to write her to tell her Gaav's back, just in case he decides to try to kill her again. All we need is for another random Dark Lord to get involved, and it would be just like the old days . . . except with all of us twenty years older and more tired, and an innocent bystander caught in the middle." 

"Me," I said, swallowing against a sudden sensation of acid creeping up my throat. 

"You," Zelgadis agreed. "Can you fight at all?" 

"Not very well," I admitted. "I met Gaav when he saved me from a pack of bandits. Mixing it up with dragons and Mazoku is . . . well, I doubt I'd last ten seconds." 

"So you're going to need a protector, on top of everything else." Zelgadis swirled the tea in his cup, frowning. "I think the only thing we can do for now is send you to the main temple of Ceiphied. The protections there won't stop Gaav or Xellos—or Val, if he decides he's working for Gaav again—" Filia winced. "—but they should handle lesser Mazoku, and I can't see how you'd be more than a side issue." 

I nodded. The Voice had been quiescent lately, and other than it, there was nothing special about me. Nothing at all. 

"The rest of you should probably go with him," the chimera added, sipping his tea. "You're all potential hostages for Xellos to use against Val and the rest of us, and Filia is a potential target for Val or even Gaav, depending on how angry they are about Val's history having been concealed from him." 

"Seriously?" Gravos asked, and I closed my eyes, cutting myself off from the conversation for a few precious seconds. 

What the hell had I done to end up in the middle of this? Those Lina Inverse stories I'd pestered Val for only a couple of days ago had _sounded_ really neat, but living one was an exercise in worry and stomach-churning fear and . . . _Ragradia, please, get me out of this in one piece._

I opened my eyes. Sighed. "Alright, then. I'm going to go back to the inn to pack up first, then head for the temple. Gravos, Jillas, I'm going to hand Val's and . . . Gaav's belongings over to you, just in case they decide to come back for them." Secretly, I doubted Gaav would bother, since I couldn't see what use a Dark Lord would have for "Red"'s meagre travelling kit, but Val might have something he valued somewhere at the bottom of his pack. 

"Leave 'em in our room," Gravos said. "We'll look after everything." 

Which I wasn't sure was entirely a good thing, but the two beastmen were devoted to Val, so hopefully it would work out alright. 

The back stairs of the inn were quiet as I padded up them and unlocked the door to our room. 

Empty. 

I felt my shoulders relax, although I hadn't been aware before that they were tense. Of _course_ it was empty. Why would they come back here unless Val wanted to fetch his pack—still slouching undisturbed at the foot of his bed—and what were the chances of my encountering them during the few seconds that would take? Practically nil, and I knew it. It was just Zelgadis' talk of targets and hostages and protections that had me on edge. 

I quickly gathered up the items that had been scattered around the room and stowed them in the owners' respective packs. I found myself shaking my head over Gaav's ridiculous lime-green shirt. _Just burn the fucking thing,_ he would probably have said if he'd been there. 

"I'd be afraid of it giving off noxious fumes," I muttered, and stuffed it into his pack. 

"Oh, my—I suppose there _would_ be some risk of that, wouldn't there? When Filia said 'lime green', I wasn't imagining anything quite like that." 

A chill raced up and down my spine, but I forced myself to turn slowly rather than whipping around to confront the intruder. "Xellos. Funny how no one, from Gaav on down, seems to have anything good to say about you." 

The Mazoku in priest's robes smiled angelically. "Well, the Chaos Dragon has always been like that, or so my master tells me—his comments on _most_ people are enough to blister paint!" 

"What do you want here?" I asked. "As you can see, both Val and Gaav are gone, and I doubt they're coming back." 

"It's _you_ I came to see, though." 

I sighed. "I take it that means I make a good snack, since I'm of about as much use as a knitted scarf on the beach at midsummer, otherwise. I don't see how I'd even make a useful hostage." The perfect Mazoku hors d'oeuvre—just what I'd always wanted to be. Come to think of it, that might also have been why Gaav had been keeping me around, even if he hadn't realized it . . . 

"Not really." That insufferable grin never wavered. "I've always found shame a bit cloying, you see. Right on the edge of rottenness. No, I don't take you that lightly. Especially not given how many years you've kept him contained." 

_What?_

Suddenly the top of a staff was pressing up under my chin, and I felt my head being pushed up until I was forced to meet a disturbing pair of violet eyes. 

"You shouldn't be a very hard nut to crack," Xellos said. "It won't take very long at all . . . and afterwards, you won't feel a thing!" And there was that cheerful smile again. I was really starting to despise that expression. "We were considering leaving you for a while longer, but with Gaav the Traitor sniffing around, Beastmaster-sama decided that it just wasn't safe. If he's going to wake up anyway, better it be where our ability to filter information will have some effect." 

Belatedly, I jerked back from him, but my limbs felt like they were made of lead, pliable and heavy. Too late, I noticed the faintest of faint glows coming from Xellos' staff. I hadn't even noticed the spell coming down over my mind like a heavy curtain. I needed to get away—but the Mazoku Priest was between me and the door. I took a step toward the balcony, beginning to stutter the words of a Levitation spell, but the bottom of Xellos' staff tangled between my legs and I fell hard, unable to get my hands underneath me in time. 

I didn't know what my Voice was, but the very fact that the Mazoku were interested in it suggested some sort of approaching disaster. 

_Ceiphied . . . Ragradia . . . help me . . ._ But those gods were dead, and couldn't respond. _Gaav! You're out there . . . hear me, please . . ._ Praying to a devil while another one loomed over me, lifting me, supporting me with an arm across my chest . . . _If you can hear . . . if you're aware at all of what's happening here . . . then kill me. Kill me before it gets loose. Because I don't know what I have inside me, but I'm sure it doesn't mean well._ A suicide prayer. An appropriate thing to send to the Chaos Dragon in what might be my last moments. 

"No more of that, now," Xellos said, and I felt a shock inside my head and everything went dark.


	19. Val

Waking up was easier than it had been in a while. This wasn't an inn bed, it was _my_ bed, although not the one at Aunt Filia's. You can always tell, even when you're in that limbo where you're not quite awake and not quite asleep. 

_Don't dream,_ he'd said, and I hadn't. Maybe my subconscious had interpreted it as a command. But even without dreaming, a handful of flickering fragments had grown together in my head to form an entire scene. 

_—You're finished, young Val of the ancient dragons._

— _That wouldn't really be so bad at all . . ._

I remembered everything about that night in the desert now, from the moment when I'd fallen from the sky to the point at which Gaav-sama had pulled his sword out of my body and I'd stared fuzzily at the pool of red blood soaking into the sand, limp in his arms. Everything I'd thought, felt, said. A tiny piece of my life, restored. 

It had better not be the last. 

I uncurled myself from among the blankets—only realizing as I did it that I'd slept coiled up, as I might have in dragon form . . . as I had when I'd been a small child, until Aunt Filia had started telling me to stretch out, that curling up wasn't _proper_. Ignoring the fact that I wasn't a golden dragon and wasn't bound to follow their tight-assed etiquette. 

I still couldn't remember the life I'd led in this room, with its worn carpet and overfilled bookshelves, but it already felt right. It felt like home. 

I slid out of bed and prodded the pile of sweat-stiff dirty clothes on the floor distastefully with my bare toes—I'd slept naked, another thing Aunt Filia had always said wasn't _proper_. I hadn't brought any of my stuff from the inn with me, but if this had been my room, anything I found here should fit. There was probably somewhere I could have a bath, too, if I could find it. 

The chest at the foot of the bed was the obvious place to check for clothes, since there was no wardrobe. I found off-white drawstring trousers and an odd sort of shirt-cape, folded neatly one on top of the other. And a large, fluffy towel with heating and drying spells on it. 

I wrapped the towel around my hips and padded out into the hallway. If Gaav-sama was here, he was behind one of the closed doors, and without the power of his presence drawing all my attention, it was possible to hear the sound of running water coming from somewhere else in the complex. 

I followed it back to the main room and through one of the arches, along a hairpin corridor that must have been designed as a sound baffle, and out into a very unexpected place. 

I didn't think the other rooms had high ceilings anymore. This one _soared_ , to several times the height of an adult dragon, and was capped with an ice-covered skylight through which faint, greenish illumination filtered. It was vast, with at least fifty entrances like the one I'd just emerged from, with waterfalls and pools at all different temperatures from steaming hot to coated with a thin film of ice. And everything was made precisely to two different scales: full dragon and human . . . or pseudo-human. Like my current form. And as though that wasn't enough, there was a fountain with a central statue in the shape of a dragon in the center of the room, a young male rearing up on his hind legs with his wings half-folded, holding a spear up above his head. His head was flung back, and water gushed from his open mouth instead of the expected roar. 

It was life-sized, or maybe a bit larger. I thought it might even be a portrait, although some of the details had been worn away by the ceaseless flow of the water. And it had to have been carven by dragons, because humans never made anatomically correct male dragon statues. 

"This was an aerie," I whispered. 

I set my clothes down on the edge of a human-sized warm pool, folded my towel beside them, and changed. I wanted a closer look at the statue, and that would be easier if we were made to the same scale. Plus, I couldn't remember how long it had been since I'd been able to revert to my true form, but I wouldn't be caught at it here by some random human. This place was _safe_. 

I waded into the fountain's basin, large enough for a dozen dragons to bathe comfortably together, and then climbed up onto the base of the statue. It was life-sized, I was fairly certain, but the proportions were a bit odd. The unfeathered wings and lack of forehead horns suggested a golden dragon, but the figure seemed too stocky, the dewclaws of the rear feet too prominent, and I was sure the water-blurred shape of the head was wrong. 

"His name was Aysel Bloodfang," a familiar voice said over the sound of the water. "A hero of a war that took place such a long time ago that hardly anyone remembers it now." 

Gaav-sama was sitting, naked and in human form, on the edge of the basin. "You look good like that," he added with that familiar smirk, lazily eyeing my body. I had a strong impulse to preen my wings, which I mostly managed to resist. 

"Come in and join me, why don't you?" I said. 

A soft chuckle. "Maybe I will, at that." There was a flash of bright red as he slid down into the water, and suddenly I was sharing the basin with a very large, very red three-headed dragon. 

I blinked and looked back and forth between Gaav-sama and the statue. Stocky, powerful body, prominent dewclaws, long, whippy tail, and the blurred shape of the statue's head _could_ have matched those hard, serpentine lines. Of course, the statue was younger, smaller, and had only one head, but the resemblance was . . . 

"I don't understand," I said. "Gaav-sama, whose aerie was this?" 

Gaav-sama made a grumbling noise and hunkered down in the water, the eyes of his leftmost head falling shut. "How many species of higher dragon are there?" he countered. 

"Four, now," I said. "Golden, white, dimos, and ancient. Five, if you count the blacks. But I take it there was at least one more." 

"A long time ago, yeah. The crimson dragons were the most warlike of Ceiphied's creations, and the mainstay of the dragon armies. Ruby-Eye considered them too dangerous to be allowed to live, so he had Zelas slaughter them all." 

"And you?" 

The eyes of his leftmost head flickered open again. "When old Ruby-Eye wanted someone to lead _his_ armies, he grabbed the highest-ranking crimson dragon that he could and tortured the poor bastard to death to derive the base pattern for a new Mazoku. Fucker never was very creative." 

"And that Mazoku was you." 

"Mmm. You have to understand, I'm not _actually_ a dragon—I was built up from scratch as an imitation using Ruby-Eye's energy. Except that half the time, the fucker didn't understand what he was copying, so I got just about all the instincts of a dragon except the ones that conflicted directly with those of a Mazoku. Pretty confusing, especially when I was younger." He shook himself a little, and added, "I wonder sometimes if Ragradia didn't set up the whole Kouma War as an opportunity to turn me. I'd already seen myself in the enemy, so from there it wasn't so many steps . . . I don't think forcefeeding Dynast or Phibby or even Dolphin a soul would have had much effect on them." 

Six blue eyes were looking anywhere but at me. I wouldn't have imagined that Gaav-sama even knew how to feel ashamed, but it was clear that he did. Silently, I slid my tail through the water until it twined around his. 

"Are you honestly unhappy because you turned out to be something more than just a . . . a war golem?" I asked. 

"It would have been easier in some ways . . . but no, I suppose not." His right head slid over and nuzzled its way along my cheek until he was able to slip his tongue underneath the protective feather-scales and tease at the bare skin right around my earhole, making me shiver. 

"So this was a crimson dragon aerie," I said, forcibly switching the subject back. "I'm surprised they wanted to live at the south pole." 

"The island's drifted since they set it up. It wasn't so far south then." 

"I think I like it." Which was true . . . but then, it was the first aerie I'd ever visited, although I'd seen ruins. 

"You always did remind me more of a crimson than an ancient in personality. I'd heard of you even before I found you in the desert that night: the only ancient dragon with the will to fight the goldens. You made a terrible pacifist. Hell, your own people were right on the edge of exiling you." 

I shook my head. "I can't even imagine." I also groaned a bit and leaned into him as he snuggled up closer to me and spread one broad, red wing over my back. His right head was on the other side of me now, nipping at my jawline, with the left one alternating between licking and talking, and the central one hovering above me with jaws spread . . . Then it darted in for the kill, and I couldn't smother the shattering cry as his teeth closed gently just _there_ , on the back of my neck. My cock had slid all the way out of its sheath, pulsing in the warm water, my wings drooped, and my tail twisted itself to the right, away from him, so that he'd be able to mount . . . by all the gods and Dark Lords too, I'd never wanted anything so much as I wanted him at that moment. 

And then the _bastard_ let me go. 

"You're not ready yet," he said. 

I slammed my body against his, knocking him against the wall of the basin, which had thankfully been built to withstand dragon horseplay. "What the hell do you mean, I'm not ready?" I snarled. I felt very ready. Also insanely horny. 

"I mean you're at risk," he said, tone suddenly grimly serious. It was like a dash of ice water hitting me straight in the face. "Val, do you have any idea how many people are after my heads? Starting with most of fucking _creation_ because I was born a Mazoku, and adding just about every Mazoku out there on top because I'm no longer Ruby-Eye's pet war golem? It's going to be you and me against the world, and without most of your memory I'm not sure you're entirely aware of what that means. You're weaker now than you were before, and if anyone finds out just how much I . . . value you, they could . . ." 

I wanted to yell at him that I didn't care, that I was willing to take those risks and would he just _fuck_ me already . . . but he deserved more as a partner than an impetuous near-hatchling. I was a thousand years old, damn it all! Even if I could only consciously remember about two percent of that time, I should have more self-control . . . 

It was an immense effort, but I mastered myself, growling at my reflection in the water. "Assuming that I never recover my memory, how strong do I need to be before you agree that I'm not at too much risk?" 

"Strong enough to fend off Xellos long enough for me to get to you," he said, and his tail coiled around mine where it was beating the water to foam, bringing it to a stop. "We'll start today. Given that it's you, and how smart and stubborn and _motivated_ you are, I'd say it won't take more than a year or two—maybe a lot less, if you can learn to adapt your Mazoku combat style to your draconic powers. Not that much time when you consider that we've got eternity." 

"Dragons aren't immortal." As he should have known. 

" _This_ dragon in front of me will be," Gaav-sama said firmly. "I've already got some ideas. It shouldn't take much. Your life-force is strong." 

His right head began nibbling its way along my jaw again, and I growled, "You know, keeping my talons off you would be a lot easier if you _stopped flirting_." 

He sat back on his haunches and sighed. "I'll do my best, but you're a walking, talking enticement, and I want you so fucking badly . . . but I'm afraid it's going to leave a permanent astral trace in both of us if we get too intimate, even without rebuilding the fucking mate bond. It wouldn't have mattered before because you had so much of my power in you in the first place, but now . . . you _shine_ , Val. Even with my astral senses crippled, I can tell that much. The least thread of my essence in you is going to stand out like a sore thumb to any normal Mazoku." 

"Well, shit," I said, and he snorted. "I'm still going to be hanging around you in the meanwhile, though—or do you intend to spend the entire two years here?" It wouldn't be pleasant, having only a man I wanted to jump but didn't dare touch for company, but I thought I could do it. 

"I wish we could, but we're going to need to go back to Seyruun for a while. If that fucking wolf-bitch is planning something, I need to know what it is. I'd prefer not to stay too long, if we can help it, though. We need to be in and out before anyone realizes that you're more to me than just another minion." 

Seyruun. Which meant I was probably going to have to tell Aunt Filia about the turn my life had now taken, and what I planned to do with the rest of it. 

_You and me against the world,_ I thought, looking at Gaav-sama, and felt my eyes crinkle and my jaw drop in a grin. The fighting might never end, but we both _liked_ fighting. And soon enough, I'd have my heart's desire: him. 

"Are we going right away?" I asked. 

"No, there's something we need to do fi—" He stopped in mid-sentence with an odd expression on all of his faces. After a moment, he violently shook his heads and said, as though to himself, "How long has it been this time? I wish they'd fucking stop it. It isn't like I can do anything even if I wanted to." 

"Stop what?" 

"Praying to me for help. Humans, I mean. Used to be, before Ragradia cursed me, I could hear their voices if I really listened. These days, it's more like someone on the astral poking me just hard enough that I can't ignore it, and it keeps on until they fucking shut up. I can't tell where they are, who they are, or what they fucking want, and I wasn't much for answering prayers even when I _could_ tell, so all it does is piss me off. You'd think they'd get the hint, and it's been tapering off over the last few centuries, but seems like even me being out of circulation for twenty years isn't enough for _some_ people. This is the first one I've had since I woke up, though, and I'd forgotten how _weird_ it feels." 

"Have you ever granted any of those prayers?" I asked, curious. 

"Not on purpose, but since most of them tended to be along the lines of 'let such-and-such die a horrible death'—really, what else would you pray to someone like me for, help with your fucking crops?—I've done a couple by accident now and again." He stepped out of the basin and shook himself, showering water everywhere as he shrank back down to human form. "I'm going to go buy some breakfast. Finish washing up—we have a lot to do this morning." 

Which wasn't unexpected. The magic circle, however, was. 

"Explain this to me one more time," I said, staring at the damned thing with breakfast souring in my stomach. He could probably tell I was stalling—in fact, my nervousness was likely to be just as important a part of a balanced breakfast for him as the sausage rolls he'd bought from some random cafe halfway around the world. I understood what he was proposing to do to me perfectly well. I just wasn't sure I believed it. 

Gaav-sama rolled his eyes. "I'm starting to wonder what that stupid golden chit was teaching you—or did she leave your magical education to the chimera and the slimy little cone? The spell saturates your physical form with your astral energies—effectively you become both an astral projection and a physical creature operating in tandem in the same space. Just to spell things out, it gives you the immunity of a pure astral to physical attacks, while your physical form still shelters your astral being from spirit attacks. _Now_ do you understand why I want you to do it? Right now, any six-year-old human girl with a dagger could kill you, if she knew where to stick it in and snuck up on you when you were tired enough." 

"And this _works_?" 

"For a creature with a sufficiently large astral body, and you're well above what I think is the minimum threshold. Worked on me, yesterday. Worked on you, centuries ago—you wouldn't remember, though, since you were still delirious from your transformation when I cast it. It does hurt like a son of a bitch, but I know you can take that. And I think you understand why this isn't negotiable." 

Which I did. We were both at enough risk from Mazoku and the other greater powers of the world without adding the risk of being killed by some random bandit or mundane assassin. But . . . Gaav-sama was talking about shifting my fundamental nature with a single spell. Ordinary dragons might have larger astral bodies than humans, but except for our shapeshifting and a slightly sharper astral sense, we had no more access to that plane than any other physical creature. What he was proposing would bind the two halves of my nature much more closely together and make me into something that was _like_ a Mazoku despite not containing any of Ruby-Eye's energies. 

I wished desperately that I remembered Valgaav's life—my old life—as more than a handful of disjointed scenes. That me had understood what it meant to be half-astral. Former-me had also known more about enduring pain than Val Ul Copt. Gaav-sama might believe in my inner strength, but I wasn't so sure of it myself. Just the memory of that overwhelming instant of cathartic agony in which I'd been reborn on his sword had been almost too much. 

I took a deep breath. _You knew this would be difficult. You knew that choosing him would hurt. And you know he's worth it._

I wasn't going to back down now. 

"Val?" 

"I'm sorry, Gaav-sama," I said, offering him a wry smile. "I'm ready now." 

He was right. It did hurt. It took all the energy I had, sitting crosslegged in the middle of the circle, to keep my back straight and not scream. But either it wasn't as bad as being shot through with Mazoku power or some portion of my former self was with me after all, and I endured until the last crackling bit of white lightning faded. 

"How do you feel?" 

I clung to the question like an anchor as I tested fingers . . . arms . . . torso . . . legs. "Surprisingly good." My entire body felt light, and there was a sensation of power circulating through me. Not only that, but the room seemed brighter, and I could sense Gaav-sama's astral body looming over me as he reached out his hand to help me up. 

"Good. The next step is to see what you can do with it, and then on to Seyruun . . . but get dressed first." 

I smirked, stretched—making sure I was facing him so that he would get an eyeful—and padded over to my clothes, moving slowly and sensually. Bite the nape of my neck and then refuse me, would he? Well, I intended to have my revenge. 

I doubted I would be able to make him break his self-discipline enough to jump me, but it was going to be fun to try.


	20. Zelgadis

_I'm going to have to get another extra desk,_ I thought, and grimaced, running my hands through my hair. It was a childhood habit I'd never quite broken, even after the gesture had started making metallic rustling sounds. My elbow bumped a stack of papers, but then I could hardly move in here without bumping a stack of papers. 

The study where Amelia and I met with petitioners was for show. Here, in this narrow room with desks jammed against both walls, was where the real work of the Kingdom of Seyruun was done. And every horizontal surface was stacked with account ledgers and drafts of trade treaties and reports from the outlying hamlets and probably there was a copy of the inventory of mousetraps for the Seyruun royal family's summer cottage in here somewhere, if I needed it for some unfathomable reason. 

Right now, I was eyebrow-deep in military reports from three dozen little outposts along the borders. Goblin and bandit activity, supply problems, and requests for personnel transfers. I'd gotten lumbered with the title of Commander-In-Chief of Seyruun's tiny army when no one else had wanted it after their last general retired, since Phil had been looking for something useful that I could do for the country other than lurking ominously behind Amelia during audiences. It wasn't all that difficult, thankfully—the job was mostly logistics rather than leadership, and there were less than a thousand men involved . . . most of whom respected me for having been Lina Inverse's travelling companion, in the same way you'd respect anyone who had done something suicidally brave. 

It took time away from researching potential cures for my condition, but I was hitting more dead ends than hopeful leads on that these days. Still, I'd promised Amelia on the day I'd given up on searching for an existing cure and decided to concentrate on creating one through original research that I wouldn't give up hope no matter what Rezo had said—my dear grandfather hadn't been omniscient, and I doubted he'd bothered doing any research at all on reversing the spells he was working on. But all I'd actually succeeded in doing so far was finding new and interesting magical ways to kill several dozen of the frogchickens I'd bought from a small-town Sorcerer's Guild in Ruvinagald that specialized in creating novel livestock through chimerization. Most of the population of the palace had learned to steer clear of me when anything involving "frog's legs" appeared on the dinner menu. 

Suddenly, a tray appeared on the very small area of clear desktop in front of me, and I almost dropped the report I was reading onto a plate of sandwiches. I rescued it just in time to avoid random grease stains. 

"You skipped lunch again," Amelia said, plopping down on the seat beside me in a casual way that would have had her deportment tutor in tears. "You know that isn't good for you, Zel. And Damien and I missed you." 

I winced. Amelia understood about my need to keep to myself sometimes, but our adoptive son was only twelve. 

My wife (and even after so many years, I felt a vague sense of wonder whenever I thought of her that way) poured tea for us both and gave the plate of sandwiches a little tap for emphasis. "Eat up. I promised Damien he could spend some time with you when he finished his lessons, but that won't be for a while yet." 

I knew she wasn't going to let up until I ate something, so I picked up the nearest sandwich and took a bite. I had to admit that the palace chefs did make a good egg salad. 

I finished that one down to the crust, took a drink of my tea, and said, "Sorry, Ame—I'll do my best to make it up to him. But I'm really worried right now—" 

"I know. You only bury yourself in work this way when something's so wrong that you don't want to think about it. And then go to your lab and blow up a few more of those awful frogchickens." 

"You used to call them 'those poor frogchickens'," I said, selecting another sandwich. 

"That was before I actually _saw_ one. I know it's unjust of me to judge them by appearances . . . but you have to admit that they're _really_ ugly." Amelia giggled. "Remember the time Damien snuck one into the Elemekian Ambassador's bedroom?" 

"I don't think I could ever forget." How Phil and Amelia could remember that incident as funny when they'd been stuck with most of the damage control, I still didn't understand. Four years later, Damien was still utterly unrepentant, claiming that it had been a just punishment for the old woman trying to hug him against his will, and I'd given up grumbling about it. 

"You know," Amelia said, "I think you're overreacting to all of this. To the business with Gaav and Val, I mean." 

For a second, I had to channel all of my concentration into not smashing my teacup between my fingers—it was very, _very_ easy for me to break things by allowing my chimera body to squeeze them with full force. "Ame, this is _Maryuu-oh Gaav_ that we're talking about. He recovered almost instantly from a full-force Ragna Blade and compared the Ra Tilt to a scratch from a kitten. Just getting his attention in a fight would probably require a _very_ powerful fusion magic spell, or . . ." 

"The Giga Slave," Amelia said softly. "I know. I remember him too. But I don't think we're going to have to fight him this time." 

"I don't see how we can avoid it." 

"Val was still calling you 'Uncle Zel'." 

I blinked several times, trying to follow her train of thought. "You mean that you think Val's going to try to hold him back? I don't see how he can. Assuming that he even wants to. He's pretty mad right now." 

"He's mostly mad at Filia. And love can be strong enough to hold anyone back, even a Dark Lord." 

" _Love?_ Are you serious?" 

"Didn't you _see_ them? The way Gaav looked at Val . . . as though it was tearing his heart out to leave . . . and then Val _following_ him, even though he didn't know where Gaav had gone . . . It's just so romantic!" 

I hadn't seen Amelia go so starry-eyed since we'd gotten the invitation to Lina and Gourry's wedding. It made me shake my head. 

"Val might be in love with Gaav," I forced myself to say, although the image it created in my head was . . . really disturbing. I did remember Valgaav, but despite the physical resemblance that had increased as he matured, I saw Val as an entirely separate person, and the thought of the young dragon having a crush on the Chaos Dragon made me feel a bit sick. "I'm less sure about the reverse, though. Ultimately, Gaav is a Mazoku—he shouldn't even be able to feel those emotions." 

"Gaav _was_ a Mazoku," my wife corrected. "I'm not sure even he knows what he is now, after a thousand years tied to a mortal soul. It would be entirely unjust to judge him on his actions from before the Kouma War." Amelia didn't fling about words like "just" and "unjust" anymore the way she had when we'd first met, but when she used them now, she _meant_ them. The fire in her didn't spit random sparks anymore—it had been trained and banked into something suitable for forging swords. 

"I'm not talking about his exploits in legend, Ame." _I'm talking about throwing myself between you and him because there was no other way to keep him from turning you into a bloody smear on the ground, and—_

"I really do think you're worrying over nothing. Besides, it's been more than a day and there's been no sign that Gaav is coming back to Seyruun. Maybe he won't." 

_And maybe Rezo will appear out of nowhere, hit me over the head with his staff, and turn me back into a human._ I sighed. If there was one thing I'd learned while travelling with Lina all those years ago, it was that if you had a set of things that _might_ happen, it wouldn't necessarily be the best or the worst that you would end up having to deal with—it would be whichever one made your life the most complicated. 

"Sir Zelgadis!" The servant who had just appeared in the doorway did a double-take and added, "Sorry, your Highness—I didn't know you were here. Sir Zelgadis, there's a fox-man at the gates who says he must speak with you urgently." 

"Jillas," I said aloud. Which implied this was something about Filia, or Val, and maybe even Gaav. 

I couldn't think of anything to do with any of those people that would make my life easier right now. _Well, of course not._

"I'll be right there," I said. 

The servant bowed and left. 

"Take another sandwich with you," Amelia said, her hand touching my wrist so lightly I almost couldn't feel it . . . which, with me, didn't mean particularly lightly. She also gave me a quick kiss—or at least I think she intended it to be quick, but as usual, I didn't want it to stop. 

The inside of my mouth is one of the few parts of my body that's capable of normal feeling, after all. 

The moment the guards parted, a reddish lightning bolt shot forward and grabbed onto my leg. "Please, Zelgadis-sama, we need your help!" Jillas looked up at me with tears in his single good eye. "That mage is missing, and Filia-sama . . . she won't . . ." 

I blinked— _mage?_ Oh, right, Taben the talisman-peddler. 

"When did you last see him?" I asked. 

"When you did, Zelgadis-sama." 

"He was supposed to go back to the inn, then join you at the temple—are you saying he never made it? Did you check his inn room?" 

Jillas nodded. And sniffled. "We think he'd been there—it was mostly packed up, and his pack was lying on its side on the floor. And the pitcher and basin were back on the washstand." 

"No blood?" I asked. "No signs of a struggle?" 

Jillas shook his head. "A little wrestling in the middle of the floor might not've left much sign, though. Taben-san isn't very big. And a Sleeping spell wouldn't've left any sign at all unless he landed on something." 

_He wouldn't just have left there of his own accord without his pack._ But why Taben? As far as I knew, he was completely insignificant in this, the least likely hostage/target of the four I'd sent to the temple. 

"What the holy hell is going on around here?" I muttered. 

"That's what we'd like to know." 

Deep, gravelly voice coming from far above my head. I forced myself to look up, even though I knew I wasn't going to like what I was going to see. 

Maryuu-oh Gaav didn't _quite_ fill the entire hallway, or at least not physically, but it wasn't for want of trying. He wasn't trying to hide his astral presence, and it loomed balefully over me. Against my leg I felt Jillas give a single convulsive shudder, sensing that something wasn't right. The Dark Lord was also frowning, shaggy red brows knit together. 

Standing in front of him was a more normal-sized figure, although this one was no more human. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure who I was looking at. I _hoped_ it was still Val—his face was unmarked, he didn't have a horn, his hair was still long and tied back with a bit of leather, and the lance slung across his back was the mundane weapon he'd been carrying when he visited us earlier rather than Ragud Mezegis—but he was wearing one of Valgaav's abdomen-baring shirt-cloak things. His astral presence was almost as solid as the Dark Lord's, pressing on my brau demon senses, but he didn't feel like I remembered Valgaav feeling. However, Val hadn't had such a force in him yesterday morning. 

"What did he do to you?" I asked, and then could have bitten my tongue off the next moment, because it might not be a safe question to ask. 

"Nothing I didn't agree to," Val said, with a scowl that rivaled his . . . master's? Friend's? _Lover's?_ I wasn't quite sure. Gaav's hand rested lightly on the young dragon's shoulder, but there were a lot of things that could have meant. "Nothing I didn't _want_ , Uncle Zel. But we're not here about me—well, mostly not. I'm going to have to talk to Aunt Filia, later." He made it sound like an unpleasant chore. "I need to close off that chapter of my life properly—I don't want any regrets." 

"So you're not going back." My mouth felt dry as I spoke the words. 

Val shook his head. "I know where I belong now, and it isn't with her." He laid his hand on top of Gaav's where it rested on his shoulder, and the Dark Lord's entire expression . . . softened, for just a second or two. Even his massive aura became less oppressive, enough that Jillas stopped burying his face in the folds of my cloak. 

"There's a couple of things we need to know from you," Gaav said, clearly believing it was time to change the subject. 

"I'll trade you answer for answer, and I go first." Risky, and I knew it, but so was having a Dark Lord in the front hall on any basis at all, and there was one thing I absolutely needed to know. 

Gaav grinned. "I thought you probably had a pair hidden somewhere under that courtier-suit of yours. Go ahead, ask." 

_You_ like _defiance, at least in small doses, don't you?_ During our fight in the Kataarts, he'd spent most of his time laughing his head off. I'd almost forgotten that. 

I took a deep breath. "What are your intentions toward Lina Inverse?" 

"I don't have any right now. Next question: Where's Xellos?" 

"I haven't seen him in more than a year. You don't have any plans for Lina _at all_ , even though she was involved in killing you?" 

The Dark Lord snorted. "What killed me was fucking up and forgetting who I was really fighting. Even if I didn't know Phibby was in the area, I should have been ready for him to try something. Granted, getting part of my astral body chopped up by the power of the Lord of Nightmares didn't _help_ —little bastard pretty much stuffed his power into the gap and pried me apart, though I'll bet you couldn't see anymore than that fucking physical-plane grandstanding with the finger-snap. Your friend was a pawn, the player's dead, and judging from the fact that the world's still here, she didn't do whatever Phibby wanted her to anyway. If I thought I could get her to join me, that might be different—given her abilities as a human, she'd make an impressive hybrid—but I don't think she'd be willing to make that kind of bargain. Is there anyone you can contact who _would_ know where Xellos is, now that he's left the city?" 

"Filia might know something," I said. "He thinks she's an interesting snack, so she has more contact with him than the rest of us. That's just an outside chance, though." Should I? He'd given me a complete answer instead of just a "no", and even let slip the fact of Xellos' absence . . . probably on purpose to make me feel guilty about my terse answers, but it was working. "I'll give you this one for free: Lina _did_ end up doing what Phibrizzo wanted her to. It's just that the results weren't what he expected." 

That actually drew a rumbling chuckle from Gaav. "Sounds like him. Your turn." 

"Do you have any idea who might have kidnapped Taben?" 

" _Taben?_ Huh. The Vezendi Sorcerers' Guild, I suppose, if their leader decided that letting the little mage just run away was too good for him. Or someone stupid who thought he'd provide some kind of leverage against me as a hostage, in which case I expect we'll be hearing about it soon. Or Xellos, in which case I have no idea what the fuck he's trying to accomplish, but having something weird happen just before the slimy little cone disappears automatically makes me suspect he's involved." 

"We'll see what we can find out," Val added. "I owe Taben a bit." Gaav made an irritable growling noise, but didn't contradict him. 

"Your turn," I prompted. 

There was a pause while the Dark Lord's cold blue eyes probed at me, and then he asked, "What happened to Val?" 

"I don't understand." 

"Don't lie to me, chimera—but I'll spell it out, to make sure you can't wiggle out of giving me a real answer. I've pieced together what I can, with Val's help, but he remembers all of thirty seconds of the year after I died, and none of it's useful. When you saw him standing here with me, you weren't just afraid for him, you were also afraid _of_ him—to a Mazoku, those taste as different as cinnamon and ginger. In fact, you were more afraid of him than you were of me for a second there, and I would have bet I scared you absolutely shitless. I want to know what happened to make you feel that way." 

Val's expression was shuttered and unreadable . . . but he was watching me too. His eyes were as unflinching as Gaav's, and almost as cold. 

Giving the wrong answer here might end up being a Very Bad Idea. Well, I'd never promised anyone not to discuss the Dark Star incident with _Gaav_. 

"I don't think we have time for the long version right now," I said, "but the short one is that Val developed a bit of a nihilist streak and usurped some power from the Overworld in an attempt to destroy _this_ world and rebuild it in an image of his choosing. And he almost pulled it off." 

Val was frowning now, deeply, staring at nothing. After a moment, he shook his head. "I don't remember any of that. How did I end up with Aunt Filia, afterwards?" 

Well, he wasn't part of the question-and-answer game, and now that I'd broken my silence, I figured I owed him something. "You reappeared as an egg, but even though I was there, I couldn't tell you why. Filia offered to look after you." 

Gaav chuckled. "Bet Zelas was shitting bricks sideways while Dynast bashed his minuscule brains out against the nearest wall. The Mazoku race has been trying to end the world for longer than even I can remember . . . and a hybrid pulls together a plan that almost works in less than a year. Not quite what I might have chosen as a memorial, but I'm still impressed. I'll hit you up for the long version some other time, chimera, but right now we need to go check up on that idiot mage and try to figure out what happened. I'll give you one more question, though, if you want it." 

I was tempted to waste it on, _Are you too stupid to remember my name, you obnoxious bastard?_ , but I doubted I'd ever have a chance to question anyone else with a Dark Lord's accumulated life-knowledge and be reasonably sure of getting a straight answer. Gaav might be obnoxious, but he was also straightforward to the point of bluntness, not slippery like Xellos. 

And there was one question that I absolutely had to ask. 

I licked my lips. "Do you know of any way to turn me back into a human being?" 

A soft snort. "Time-reversal spells. Of course, you'd lose a lot more than just your golem and brau demon parts that way, like the past quarter-century of your life. Other than that, not really. There's no active spell holding you together—even with my astral senses crippled by this fucking lump of meat I'm hauling around, I can tell that much—and while you might be able to get rid of the golem part without lasting damage, the human and the brau demon have merged together on the astral. Even if you managed to make a clean clone of your original body and shifted your soul inside, you'd start turning blue a couple of weeks later. Trying to get rid of the brau demon fraction would probably leave you a vegetable. Best you could hope for would be to dilute it by re-chimerising yourself using additional human material. If you're not willing to do that, just let it go. Believe me—I've got a thousand fucking years of experience in being a freak, and brooding about it just makes it worse." 

That brought me up short, because I'd just been reacting in exactly the way he must have anticipated: anger, denial, and depression. Using a time-reversal spell to take myself back to age sixteen was out of the question, of course, even if I could find one that was strong enough. I wasn't going to do that to Amelia. Even when we'd been just friends, I'd valued my connection with her more than my cure. _It just figures that there would be a foolproof method I hadn't thought of that I wouldn't be able to bring myself to use._

Other than that, Gaav had really only confirmed what Rezo had told me and I'd begun to suspect myself, but it was a bitter pill to swallow anyway. 

It hadn't really occurred to me before that the Chaos Dragon was also an involuntary chimera, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Being lumped into the same category as a Mazoku made my skin crawl—a sensation that I experienced to the full despite my condition, since it was psychosomatic rather than physical. But at the same time, I felt the tiniest little bit of sympathy for him. 

"Jillas, wasn't it?" 

The fox-man jumped. "Y-yes, Gaav-sama!" 

"Don't worry, I'm not going to bite you. Too much work to get the fur out from between my teeth, afterwards." Gaav smirked. "Besides, you belong to Val. So Taben disappeared from the inn room?" 

"Yes, Gaav-sama." 

"Come over here." 

Val nodded encouragingly and held out his hand. Very, very carefully, with his ears flickering as Jillas tried to keep them forward when they wanted to lie back, the fox-man detached himself from my leg and stepped forward to take that hand. 

"Think you can teleport all three of us, Val?" Gaav prompted. 

"I think so. It isn't much different from taking my lance along." 

"Four of us," I corrected, and forced myself to take two steps forward, which put me beside Val on the opposite side from Jillas. "No offense, but I'd rather not have a Dark Lord running around Seyruun without anyone keeping an eye on him." 

Gaav's snort sounded incredulous. "And yet you let the slimy little cone run around loose, knowing what he could do? Never mind, it was a rhetorical question. Val." 

Reality rippled, staggered . . . and I landed hard on a wooden floor from about six inches up, grabbing at the nearest stable object to keep myself from falling over. Somewhere off to my right, Jillas yelped. 

The thing I was gripping was Gaav's elbow. He smirked at me as I snatched my hand back. 

"Sorry," Val said. "I wasn't sure I could manage pinpoint accuracy with that much extra drag to deal with, and it's better to appear above the floor than _in_ it." 

"Except that I nearly clipped part of the ceiling," Gaav rumbled. "Never mind, we'll work on it." A short pause, only about half a beat. "Shit. Xellos _was_ here." 

"Is that why it smells like wet dog?" Val asked. 

I drew in a deep breath, but I couldn't smell anything. 

"Wet wolf," Gaav corrected. "And it's an astral trace, not a physical smell. Xellos' trace is a lot like Zelas'—a lot more than, say, Rashatt's was like mine. Don't know if it's because she put so much of her power into him, or just because they think alike. Which is what makes him so much of a pain in the ass. Jillas, was the room like this when you got here?" 

"Yes, Gaav-sama—I thought it would be better not to move anything." 

"Hmph. Not as dumb as you look. He was packing up, then. Doesn't look like there was a fight . . . Anyone see anything out of place?" 

I gave the place a quick glance, but I'd only been in here once before, and I might not even have noticed if someone had rearranged the furniture. Val was more thorough, looking around and stepping through the doors that led out onto the balcony. Gaav stood in the middle of the floor with his eyes narrowed. I wasn't quite sure what he was doing until he jerked his chin and said, "There's something under that bed," and I realized he must have been performing a more detailed probe of the astral. 

Jillas got down on his knees and stuffed his head in among the dust bunnies under the indicated item of furniture. After a moment, he pulled out something small and shiny: an amulet on a broken thong. 

"I don't think it had been there for long," the fox-man said as he offered the thing to Gaav. "It left a scrape in the dust, but there's no dust actually _on_ it." 

"Looks like a seal talisman with an identifying impression spell," Gaav said, examining the flat, teardrop-shaped surface. "Official, Sorcerer's Guild, belonging to one Dekimus Magister . . . and I'll bet you a bronze piece against a one-legged mule that Dekimus is the head of the Vezendi Guild chapter." 

"I can check that up at the palace," I said. The Guild sent us a copy of their official registry list every year, although no one was quite sure why they bothered. If we'd wanted that information, we could just have squeezed it out of the local Guild branch. 

Gaav tossed me the talisman. I caught it one-handed, and confirmed to my own satisfaction that it bore the Guild crest and runes spelling out _Dekimus Mag._

"This doesn't make any sense," Val said. "Xellos must be messing with us." 

"The question is, in which direction?" I said. "Either he kidnapped Taben and planted the seal, or the Guild took Taben and Xellos was here for some other reason . . . or they're working together, but again that doesn't make any sense." 

"I still don't understand why they chose to steal _Taben_ , of all people," Val said. 

"If it was Xellos, he may just have been taking advantage of an easy way to create a red herring," I said, holding up the talisman. 

"No," Gaav rumbled. "No, the slimy little cone does things in layers. If all he wanted was a random hostage, he would have grabbed Jillas here, to get Val's goat, or maybe your wife, so that he'd have leverage over Seyruun, too. Taben's the worst possible choice, with no guarantee anyone would even care enough to try to rescue him. So there has to be something specific about our incompetent little mage . . ." 

"He's a shamanist water caster specializing in talismans," Val said. "He's alone in the world, as far as we know. He can't fight worth shit. And he's incurably deaf. Other than that, there's nothing separating him from anyone walking past—" 

Gaav interrupted him with a spew of vitriol that made me blink—it wasn't just his usual casual profanity. Instead, he seemed to be using five dead languages that I recognized, plus at least two that I didn't, to call himself an idiot. 

"Gaav-sama?" Val's tone of voice was gentle. Concerned. 

"Lei Magnus had no sense of smell," the Dark Lord rumbled with a disgusted expression on his face. "It wasn't widely known, because it didn't constitute much of a handicap—well, unless he forgot to bathe regularly." 

Lei Magnus—what did he have to do with anything? Greatest mage of his era, host of one of the shards of Shabranigdo— 

_Oh._

_Oh, shit._

Rezo the Red Priest, incurably blind, and host of one of the shards of Shabranigdo. 

And Taben the Green, incurably deaf and possibly kidnapped by Mazoku. 

"It could still be a red herring," Gaav added. "The slimy little cone knows I'm involved and that I'd eventually make the connection. If he wanted cover for something else, this would be a good way of getting it. And if he did take the idiot mage, there's no way of telling where the two of them are now." 

"So the only clue we have is Vezendi," I said slowly, weighing the seal in my hand. "At least, until something else happens." 

"Waiting for something to happen isn't safe when you're talking about Xellos, Zelgadis-sama," Jillas said. "It wasn't safe even when he was just dropping in on Filia-sama for a snack . . . and I don't think he's joking now, the way he was then." The fox-man shivered. 

"So Val and I go to Vezendi and see if we can stir anything up," Gaav said. "Meanwhile, I expect you know more than we do about how to apply whatever intelligence apparatus Seyruun has at the moment, Zelgadis Greywords. And if you're contacting Lina Inverse anyway, as I expect you will be if you haven't already, warn her about this, not just about me." 

The implicit assumption that I'd obey him unquestioningly . . . pissed me off, as Gaav himself would have said. A member of the Seyruun royal family, even a minor by-marriage member, taking orders from a Dark Lord went against every principle the country had been founded on. The problem was that he was giving the _right_ order in this case. Arguing with him would make me look like the worst kind of petty, pretentious bureaucrat with a procedure fetish. 

Plus, he'd called me "Zelgadis" instead of "chimera" for once, so a little positive reinforcement was probably in order. 

"I already sent Lina a letter," I admitted. "But it looks like it might be time for another one. Are you going to leave right away?" 

"We've got one more stop to make, remember?" Val said. "Or at least, I do. Do you know if Aunt Filia is still staying at the same inn?"


	21. Filia

There was a time when I had found the inner sanctum of a temple, any temple, to be a restful place. 

That was when I was young and naive, of course. Before I'd found out what rot had entered the priesthood of Flarelord Vrabazard; before I'd seen the desecrated temple of the ancient dragons, with the cold wind wailing around the iron crosses outside and its corridors packed with bones; before the Supreme Elder had turned away from me as a Mazoku threatened my life; before I'd seen a crying hatchling in a Mazoku-dragon chimera bent on destroying the world. Before. 

I'd been a child then, or little more than. 

Was I still a child now? 

That I was a failure as a mother was unquestionable. I mean, my adoptive son had rejected my guidance in order to go off with a Dark Lord—you couldn't _be_ much more of a failure than that. And so now, I knelt in front of an empty statue and offered up words I didn't really mean, looking for solace that I doubted would ever come. But these weren't the kind of negative feelings I could get rid of by unlimbering my mace and bashing some unsuspecting rocks into rubble. 

This was a big temple, and it had statues of all the dragon gods—Ceiphied at the center of the sanctum, with Valwin and Vrabazard fanning out to one side of Him, and Rangort and Ragradia on the other. I'd chosen to kneel in front of the Aqualord, with my back to the Flarelord. 

Once I'd learned what my former god had condoned, I'd sworn never to pray to Him again. 

Ragradia's statue had been given scales of lapis lazuli, overlapping and about an inch wide. There were two hundred and thirty-eight visible on the front of each foot. I'd counted them repeatedly, unable to focus on my quest for spiritual guidance . . . if you could call it that. 

If some remnant of the Aqualord somewhere out there in the world decided to give me a sign, I wasn't sure how I would react. By running screaming from the room, maybe. 

It was the ritual of prayer that I still found soothing, not the substance. 

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the air behind me rippled. 

"Filia-sama!" 

I stopped pretending to pray and stood up, turning as I did so. "Jillas, what are you—" 

Then I stopped again, because I'd realized that Jillas wasn't alone. One of the people standing with him was the one I most wanted to see, and the other was someone I wanted to stay well away from for the rest of my life. 

"Filia-san," Val greeted me quietly, and his expression was neutral . . . but there was an intensity about him on the astral, like nothing I'd ever sensed before. I felt it all the more strongly because my pathetic attempts at meditation had put me in a state of sensitivity I hadn't achieved since I had placed my Divine Jewel in the hands of the Supreme Elder and declared I was done with the priesthood. 

Gaav had a skewed smirk on his face, and the energies shifting around him were heavy and dark and disturbing . . . although oddly, I didn't find them innately revolting the way I did Xellos'. He still felt like a dragon, just a very nasty and . . . inverted one, whose presence made my hand itch for my mace. But I clenched my hands in the folds of my skirts instead. Xellos might be willing to treat my violence as a joke, but there was every possibility that Gaav would return it in kind. 

He looked up at the statue of Vrabazard to his left, and his smirk widened. "Pretty crappy likeness, not that he deserves anything better. But you'd think they'd at least get the head right, even if they always feel they have to emasculate him." 

I'd never noticed that before—well, I mean, I'd noticed, but I hadn't _noticed_. It had always just seemed appropriate that the statues of the gods were sexless. I suppose it made them feel more universal or something like that. 

"Are any of them any good?" Val asked, sounding curious. 

"Not really. Valwin should look more like a silver version of an ancient, with feathered wings, not a cross between a white and a sea serpent. Rangort's built like a dimos, and his scales are sort of mottled green and brown. Ragradia's the one that looked more serpentine, but with webbed earflaps and larger, coarser scales along her back, although they did get the colour right. And don't even get me started on him," the Chaos Dragon finished, nodding in the direction of the Ceiphied statue, the altar in front of it, and the open-mouthed priest who'd been trimming the candles flanking the altar. "The Flare Dragon and Ruby-Eye were a lot more alike—in appearance, and in attitude—than most people want to admit. They just had opposite goals." 

"Sir, that is blasphemy!" The priest appeared to have found his voice, finally. He also seemed to have no astral sense at all, but that was normal for humans. "And no weapons are permitted in this sacred place! I really must ask you to leave." 

Gaav laughed, the sound rumbling through the room. "You don't have a fucking clue, do you? Still, I suppose it's either leave or level the building. You're not even worth the trouble of blasting you to shut you up. Val, I'll meet you when you're done." 

"I don't expect this to take long," Val said, looking up at his tall companion, and the Chaos Dragon's expression became almost affectionate for a moment before he pointedly turned his back on the priest and took a step toward the entrance. Space warped around him, and he disappeared, with the priest gaping after him like a landed fish. "If you make any trouble about this," Val added to the priest, touching the lance strapped to his back, " _I'm_ going to level the temple, or try to. I'm not sure I could pull it off yet . . . but consider whether or not you're willing to find out _very_ carefully before you open your mouth again." 

" _Val,_ " I said warningly. 

The expression he turned on me was cold—not quite one of Valgaav's sneers, but it was getting there. Since he'd hit fourteen or fifteen, Val had looked entirely too much like his former self for my comfort, even without the horn and facial markings. "Let's take this somewhere else before one of us does something we both regret. If it's any consolation, twenty minutes to say my piece and ask my questions, and I'll be out of your life for good." 

"That isn't what I want," I protested. _Is it?_ I felt . . . very strange. Numb and hollow. 

The priest cleared his throat. "Sir and madam . . . there's a sitting room just this way, if you'd care to make use of it." 

Val shrugged. "That should do. Filia-san?" 

I swallowed. Nodded. 

Was that when we'd begun to grow apart? When he'd started to take on Valgaav's aspect? I wondered about that as I followed in the wake of the priest. Val had been a happy child . . . hadn't he? Active and curious and . . . well, if he'd played a little bit rough sometimes, that was just something that boys did, wasn't it? Gravos and Jillas and my human friends had all seemed to think it was normal. 

"It's all wrong," I whispered. 

"Yes," Val said, only a little louder. "Yes, it is. But maybe not in the ways that you think." 

"Val-sama . . ." 

Val sighed. "Calm down, Jillas. I promise I'll talk to you and Gravos about what you want to do, but not right now. Just wait outside," he added as we reached the door of the sitting room and the priest showed us in. 

I barely noticed the furnishings. Instead, I took out my portable tea set the moment I sat down, laying everything out on a low table and beginning to prepare myself a cup. I badly needed something to do with my hands. 

Val propped himself and his lance against the wall beside a window that looked out on the temple's garden, which in turn was divided from the public square by a low wall. 

"I'm not going back to Sandy Point with you, Aunt Filia," he said. "Not that you hadn't probably figured that out already." 

Sandy Point was the Outer World coastal town where I had opened my shop, twenty years ago, when the world had seemed to hold infinite possibilities. It was also the town Val had fled two months ago, on his birthday. 

I nodded slowly. "It isn't as though I can drag you back in chains," I said to my teacup. 

"But you'd like to." It wasn't a question. 

"Every mother wants to protect her child," I replied. _And you need more protection than most, because you need to be protected from what you were._

" _Mother?_ I'm twice your age. I'm not entirely clear on what happened twenty years ago, but just because I got hit with a time-reversal spell or whatever _doesn't_ give you the right to deny me knowledge and it sure as _hell_ doesn't give you the right to run my life, now that I've begun to recover." 

"I just wanted you to be happy." I kept saying that to him. Kept repeating it to myself, in a tiny, hopeless voice. _Happy, happy, happy . . ._

"And just what about the life you gave me did you think would make me happy?" Val asked. 

"I would have thought not having your family torn away from you in an explosion of gore might help," I snapped . . . but I was still staring at my teapot. I couldn't meet his eyes. I was too afraid that they would look like cold, shiny gold mirrors. Valgaav's eyes. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Val shake his head. "That was a lost cause from the beginning, Filia-san. Part of me always remembered. For the past twenty years, I've been dreaming at irregular intervals of my real mother's dead body. Among other impossible things." 

"I didn't know," I said miserably. "I wanted to believe that you'd been given a real second chance . . ." 

"What's the point of a second chance when you don't remember what went wrong the first time? And what the hell makes you think I wanted one anyway? Look at me, Filia. See _me_ , not that fucking ancient dragon plushie you've set up inside your head as a stand-in. I'm a fighter. That isn't just what I've trained to do, it's what I _am_. Take that away from me, and you don't have _me_ anymore, you have a completely different person. Someone I don't want to be." He made a harsh sound that was almost a laugh. "I don't remember any of the other ancient dragons, but I do remember thinking, the night I tumbled down a sand dune and just about landed on Gaav-sama's boots, that if by some miracle anyone else survived, I was going to be shunned by the other members of my tribe for the rest of my days, if not outright exiled. For trying to defend myself. For trying to save the hatchlings by some method other than taking them and running away, or acting as a meat shield and letting the goldens tear me apart. Always a fighter, always in the wrong place, among the wrong people. Always wrong, until that night. I was never what you wanted to make of me." 

Each word was like a stone, a weight being dropped into my lap until the pile made me labour for breath. 

"Gaav-sama was the first person who ever looked at me, understood what I was, and didn't immediately develop a fixation on changing me into something else. You have no idea what he means to me, so don't even try. You especially have no idea what his _death_ meant to me. You've never been mated, and you've certainly never _lost_ a mate. Our grief and our pain were never as alike as you thought. You lost your family and friends, but I lost all of that _plus_ the center of my fucking world." 

My teacup rattled against the saucer as I set it down. I'd thought that the taste would calm me, but it was too bitter. Like his words. 

"'Didn't immediately develop a fixation on changing you into something else'? Val, he turned you into a Mazoku!" That was the simplest point to deal with. The one that wasn't on the edge of breaking my mind. 

"He offered me the choice," Val said. "I could have chosen to die a dragon, instead. But afterwards, I was still _me_ , just in a different shell." 

"He brainwashed you!" 

Val growled warningly, and my head snapped up, even though I didn't want to meet his eyes. Hot, angry gold . . . but not a pair of cold, empty mirrors. Not Valgaav's eyes as I remembered them. 

"There's no countering that accusation, is there?" he said. "Any answer I could give that doesn't match with what you _think_ I should be saying, you'll just use as more evidence that I'm not in my 'right mind'. Whatever you think my right mind is supposed to be. I couldn't have proved my point better if I'd tried. You don't see the real me. You don't _want_ to see the real me. I'm starting to wonder why I even thought it was worth trying to explain things to you." 

I couldn't find any words. They all seemed to have run away. Perhaps they'd hidden under the chair cushions, or in the shelter of a dead god's wings, out in the sanctuary where I'd been pretending to pray. 

Val shook his head and looked away from me. "Maybe I should just have left a note, but I thought I owed you something. You did protect me when I was helpless to protect myself, even if you screwed up a lot of the rest." He sounded very tired. Almost as tired as I felt. 

"Val . . ." That was one word. I managed to find a few more. "How can he be your mate? The binding spell only works on dragons—not even on elves! So how could a Mazoku . . . ?" 

"A Mazoku patterned after a dragon. When I suggested it to him, we weren't sure it would work either, but we both wanted it. The relationship we had . . . was already permanent. The spell just made it official, you could say. For a little while, I think I was the happiest I had ever been, although again, I don't _remember_. And then it broke." There was that not-quite-a-laugh again. "That part I do remember—losing consciousness as the whole thing came apart in my head and stabbed into me. Like I'd squeezed a glass bottle and splintered it so badly that there were bits sticking out of the back of my hand. And I don't think the pain went away until I ended up back in the egg. I don't have it now, but I don't have the bond, either, and I want it back so badly . . ." His hands had tightened into white-knuckled fists as he spoke, and he stopped and deliberately shook them out. 

"You love him that much," I whispered. 

"I love him that much." Flat, even voice. Level gaze. I couldn't remember ever seeing him look so serious. Then Val snorted and his mouth twisted up into a half-smile that was only wryly ironic, not sneering. "You know, I can just imagine that in some other world where the massacre never happened some . . . some maiden great-aunt of mine is primly sipping her tea and saying that she always knew I would come to a bad end." 

"So I'm your maiden great-aunt now?" Well, it was better than some of the things he could have called me. 

"No, you're too young. Maybe an honorary niece, or something." The smile faded, and he turned his head to look out the window. "Filia-san, I need you to tell me what happened." 

"What . . . happened? I'm sorry, but I really don't understand." 

"Uncle Zel said that I 'developed a bit of a nihilist streak and usurped some power from the Overworld in an attempt to destroy _this_ world and rebuild it in an image of my choosing,' I think it was, but I don't remember any of it, and I need to know. Gaav-sama can fill the rest of it in for me at our leisure, but he wasn't around for that part, and everyone else keeps stonewalling me because _you_ made them promise." 

I took a slow, deep breath. Fidgeted with my cup of cold tea. "I was going to tell you when I came to your hotel room this morning, but you were already gone." _Why is he still "Uncle Zel" when I've become "Filia-san"?_ "There are some things Jillas and Gravos may be able to fill in better than me—they were already working for you then, and I was on the other side." 

"Just cover what you know for now. I'll talk to Jillas later." 

"All right," I said. "It began for me when the Supreme Elder of Vrabazard's temple sent me out into the world to do something about a prophecy . . ." 

Val listened quietly while I covered my initial visit to Luna Inverse, her recommendation of Lina, my "test" that had resulted in the red-headed sorceress nearly destroying a port city, the trip to the Outer World, and the fight Lina and the others had gotten into with Gravos and Jillas when the two beastmen had attempted large-scale banditry, which made him shake his head. 

"They really are terrible at that sort of thing, aren't they?" he said, smiling. With his expression relaxed, he almost looked . . . normal. As though none of this had ever happened. 

"They're terrible at almost everything," I admitted, matching his wry tone. "Although Jillas ended up surprising us." 

I wanted to gloss over that first fight with him, but in the end, with his eyes on me, I didn't quite dare. He frowned as though he felt some kind of shadow falling over him, but again, he didn't interrupt. I was able to just skim over most of it anyway, since I'd been buried in the sand and unable to participate or even watch. 

I then glossed over the first series of silly detours our path had taken (ugh, I never wanted to remember that town where dragons were illegal again) and got to the shrine, the second fight, and the revelation of his nature, stopping in mid-sentence at one point as he raised his left hand to rub at his right upper arm. 

"You do remember," I said, unable to keep an accusatory tone out of my voice. 

Val shook his head. "Only that I had very bad problems with that arm, as a Mazoku hybrid. Transforming was just about reflexive for me, but whenever I tried to do it, it went wrong . . . flesh bubbling off my bones because the energies were opposed in ways that even Gaav-sama couldn't fix . . ." He grimaced. "But go on. What happened after that?" 

"Xellos fought you to a standstill, and after that you disappeared. I don't know where you went—maybe the cave where we found you, a long time later." 

"I remember the cave," Val said in a low tone. "I think I was there for a while. The sorceress I was so angry at . . . that must have been Aunt Lina." 

"Gravos and Jillas came after us after that," I explained. "It was . . . more than a bit of a mess . . . Jillas was the one who eventually tricked us out of Gorun Nova, a couple of weeks later." I wasn't about to tell the whole story, the silliness about the abandoned temple and the trick swords and all the rest of it. Because then I'd have to admit that I'd thrown a fit when Jillas' silly fake love-destiny machine had tried to pair me with Xellos. It wasn't important, anyway. "We followed him into the caves and got thoroughly lost. And separated." 

I gave Val a quick glance, but his expression was almost bland. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Xellos found you first. He tried to recruit you for the Mazoku." 

"And I spat in his face—maybe not literally, but my answer would have meant about the same thing. No, I don't remember," he added at my surprised look. "But I know who I am, and there's no way that I could have done anything else. Joining up with _them_ , when Gaav-sama had fought against their agenda to his last ounce of strength . . . it would have been unthinkable." After the briefest of pauses, he added, "I'm betting that Xellos' contingency orders were to eliminate me." 

I swallowed. Nodded. "I . . . this is really difficult." 

"We fought." Val's voice was low but inexorable. "Either it was a stalemate, or we were interrupted, because we're both still here. Then what?" 

"You took Gorun Nova and Ragud Mezegis and left. There was a teleportation device down in the caves. It led to a platform in the middle of the Demon Sea, where Shabranigdo and Ceiphied had fought during the Shinma War. You and Almace had set up your operations there, because it was the place where the wall between the worlds was thinnest. Almace . . . it was around that time he finally told us what he'd been doing, what the plan was that he'd asked you to help him with. He was going to open a gate to the Overworld and pull part of Dark Star Dugradigdo through it—he thought it could be destroyed if it was divided and weakened, like the parts of Shabranigdo—but you had your own plans for it—Val? Val, please, are you all right?" He had gone very pale, eyes wide open and staring at nothing. 

"Dark . . . star . . ." he whispered. "I . . . No. No, no, no! He wouldn't have wanted this! Not this! Get out . . . of my _head_ . . . !" The words came louder and louder, until they ended in a full draconic roar. Val's wings snapped out, tips slamming into the walls of the room, and the muscles of his arms began to thicken as black feather-scales boiled down to cover the skin. 

"No, Val, you can't transform here! Val, please!" I didn't know what to do—I couldn't move him, even teleporting him would have required me to be able to lift him, but if he expanded to full size in here, he was going to destroy the building, and he wasn't listening to me, didn't even seem to be seeing me as he dug his claws into his forehead, leaving bloody gouges behind. There was a tearing noise, and his tail snaked down and began lashing across the floor. 

"Not you—I'm not—I didn't mean this! I never meant this! Stop it! I'm not—not going to . . . _Gaav-sama!_ " 

"Damn it, Val!" A pair of very large arms clamped around the young dragon's dangerously bulging torso. "Val, whatever it is, it isn't happening now— Are you listening to me? Can you even _hear_ me?" The devil dragon finished with a shattering curse in Ryugo that vibrated all the furniture. Then he turned his gaze on me. "I'm taking him outside before he breaks the building open. Do whatever fucking damage control you can manage, although that may not be much at this point." 

Space wavered, and the two of them, Val still screaming and babbling nonsense, vanished from the sitting room and reappeared outside in the garden.


	22. Val

It was white. Everything was white. 

_—we'll make it all end in emptiness—_

(This isn't what I wanted.) 

"Come on, Val! I know you're in there!" 

(Who's calling me?) 

A sting in my face, but it was irrelevant when compared to the inflamed agony inside my head. 

_—yes, that's it. We'll end it all—_

(I don't want to live in a world without him. I don't want to live in a world that would allow the two of us to be torn apart. But he didn't want to destroy everything.) 

"Val, I'm right here." 

His voice. I knew it now. Torn out of the past so that I could hear the warm gravel of it in my ears one last time. 

(We may end, but we're also going to begin again.) 

_—how dare you?! **If this is your goal, I will help.** Interfering bitch! **Perhaps you can expend the last of our power, and he will end as well.** You're mad! **Dugradigdo, we are both already dead.** You mean _ you're _dead, Volfied!—_

Warm weight on my back, pinning me to the ground. Massive teeth closing with utmost gentleness on the nape of my neck. The smell of dragon musk and hot metal invaded my senses. 

(What?) 

"Come back to me, Val!" 

"Gaav . . . sama . . ." 

The bubble burst. I wasn't floating in white, fighting an endless battle to control the power of Dark Star, which was also at war with itself. I was crouched somewhere outdoors, with a low wall pressed against my belly and several squished flowerbeds under my forequarters. Gaav-sama was on top of me, in something very close to a mating posture, restraining me with his weight and his grip. 

There was a throbbing pain inside my head, a sense of something missing . . . but not my memories, not anymore. I remembered everything. Including the parts I wished I didn't. 

"I wanted to die," I said to the head that was watching me, with deep concern, from the left. "I didn't want to live in a world without you. But I couldn't just give up, either. You always despised quitters, and discarding your ideals would have been like losing you all over again." 

A gentle nibble along my jaw. "Maybe that was a little premature, hmm?" 

"I didn't know," I said. "How could I? You didn't know either!" Anger was familiar, easier to deal with than pain. 

"No, I didn't." There was a bit of a pause, and when he spoke again, it was in Ryugo. "Val of the ancient dragons, I swear to thee by the gold that shines on the Sea of Chaos that I will always return, even if I have to claw my way out of the infinite darkness between the worlds." Another gentle nibble, and he switched languages again. "So wait for me next time—at least a century or so—before going off half-cocked." 

"Yes, Gaav-sama." I said it with a vast feeling of relief. There wasn't a hell of a lot that the Chaos Dragon had ever held sacred, but I knew that an oath on the Lord of Nightmares had meaning even for him. 

"Just Gaav," he corrected. "I know you mean it affectionately, but if I'm going to mate you again, I want it to be as equals." 

"'Why don't we join forces?'" I quoted. "Just about the first thing you ever said to me. Not, 'Come work for me.' I know you've never looked down on me . . . but I've always respected your power, and your experience." 

"That doesn't mean you have to bring it up every time you open your mouth." Another little nibble along my jaw softened the words. "I take it that you remember now." 

"Everything," I said. "But I don't . . . I think some of it's still in the process of sorting itself out." 

When he'd brought me to the temple, something had already been moving inside me, as though my perception of the world had grown darker, but also richer and more vibrant—my memories starting to layer everything with a hundred different meanings, even thought I'd had no access to them until just now. I hadn't really been Val Ul Copt, young and ignorant reborn ancient dragon, in quite a while, but I knew that I wasn't quite Valgaav either. That phase of my life was over. 

I was going to need to find a name for my new self . . . but it wasn't urgent. In fact, it deserved a lot more thought than I could give it right now. For the time being, I'd be just Val. 

"Let it find its level," Gaav-sama— _Gaav_ —rumbled softly. "You have plenty of time." 

"I also have a stone wall imprinting itself diagonally on my stomach," I told him, and he chuckled and lifted his weight off my back so that I could get up. I shook out my wings, folded them, and shrank myself back down to human form. Naked human form, because as a Mazoku hybrid, I hadn't needed clothes spelled to shift with me. 

Warm cloth draped itself over my shoulders: Gaav's coat, the blue one he'd bought from the werewolf-woman. _He_ hadn't had any clothing problems, I observed enviously. Or maybe his shirt and trousers and boots were fakes, since I knew he retained some astral projection skills despite being locked to a physical body. 

I wasn't sure if I had any abilities in that category yet. My current pure-dragon astral body felt different from my old hybrid one, even after having been concentrated, reinforced, and re-linked by the spell this morning. I'd already known I was going to have to work to drill new reflexes into my body and brain, but I hadn't understood just how much time and effort that was going to take, and the knowledge made me scowl. 

"I'd like a better look later, but _they_ don't fucking get to ogle you," Gaav told me, jerking his head in the direction of the street. 

I turned slowly, the skirts of the coat dragging on the flagstones of a path between squashed flowerbeds. 

I'd expected us to have picked up a few watchers—Filia and Gravos and Jillas and the shrine-priest—but I hadn't been expecting the dozen soldiers cordoning off the street, or Uncle Zel moving among them, or the ordinary Seyruunese civilians they were keeping away from us. Fifty or more people. 

"Guess we're not coming back to Seyruun for a while," I said. 

"And everyone from here to the south pole's going to know I'm not dead within the year," Gaav replied. "What a pain in the ass." 

"Sorry." The word tasted bitter on my tongue. 

"Not your fault—the whole situation was fucked up from the beginning. And having you with me is worth more than a few extra months of preparation time before I have to face down my family. They would already have known something was going on, anyway." 

Uncle Zel finished whatever he was saying to the soldiers, and stepped through the cordon, approaching us. 

"Filia told me what happened," he said. "Are the two of you all right? What happened?" 

"I had a violent flashback to what it was like to merge with Dark Star," I replied. "Which was hellish, since I was suicidally depressed and it was insane. I was . . . hallucinating for a bit, I think." 

"Filia said you almost reverted to dragon form in a room barely ten feet square." 

I winced. "I think so, yes. I . . . don't remember that part very well." 

"It's a normal dragon reaction to feeling threatened," Gaav added. "Hardly surprising that he'd do it, with a thousand years of crap suddenly dropping into his mind like a ton of bricks." 

Uncle Zel jerked. "Then your memory . . ." 

"Has returned in full. And it hasn't changed anything about what I mean to do," I said, glancing at Gaav. He didn't smile, but he also didn't need to. I could see the warmth in his eyes, feel it in the little whisps of astral energy he constantly shed. "For what it's worth, the Valgaav you remember . . . was in so much pain that he'd lost most of his sanity. I'm not that person. The world is safe from me." 

"So nothing's changed," Gaav rumbled. "We're still allies, for the time being. And we'll be going to Vezendi after we get Val some more clothes." He draped his arm over my shoulders as though to illustrate the point. "For what it's worth, if this is what we think it might be, I'll know when the Shard breaks loose. It hasn't, yet." 

"You will?" Uncle Zel asked. Our civilian audience, I noted, was being dispersed by the soldiers and Aunt Filia. Or maybe they were just bored with watching the three of us standing around talking . . . and there was some kind of sound-baffle spell between us and the street, so they wouldn't be able to hear what we were saying. How long had that been there? 

"I've got a sort of . . . active version of the double-lobed version of the Planes Chart in my head," Gaav was explaining. "All five of us do—fuck, the dragon gods probably do too—but not the lesser Mazoku. Since I woke up, it's been almost level, tilted just slightly toward the Mazoku side, which is better-balanced than it's been in a long time. If part of old Ruby-Eye wakes up, though, it's going to tilt a lot more, back to something like the angle it was at when Phibby was still alive." 

Uncle Zel frowned. "So since the Kouma War, the Mazoku have been ascendant?" he said—mostly to himself, from his tone. 

Gaav nodded. "Except for the twenty years I was out of commission, which would have made it tilt the other way for a while. Ragradia's death fucked everything up, pretty much. If I'd kept following Ruby-Eye's plan like a good little war golem, we'd probably all be kissing the Lord of Nightmares' golden ass right now. My going my own way . . . didn't _officially_ change the balance, since I never actually went over to Ceiphied's side, but it did alter some things." 

"Hmm." Uncle Zel absently adjusted his swordbelt. "Anyway, you'll be glad to know that you're not going to be arrested for indecent exposure." 

" _What?_ " I spluttered. Damn it, where was my lance? If we had to fight our way out, or look like we were— 

"Most of the people watching you didn't entirely understand what they were seeing, and Filia's sound-shield spell blocked them from hearing what you were saying, but I got a running commentary from her on what neck-bites and pinning someone with your body mean in dragon culture . . . and if two _humans_ had been making out in public like that, I probably _would_ have to arrest them. Or at least try to." There was a distinct flush of dusky pink along Uncle Zel's cheekbones. Along mine too, I expected. My face was certainly hot. "I think we've got everyone half-convinced that it was an experimental illusion-casting that got out of hand—we've had things like that happen a couple of times before." 

"You're going to have to pull up what's left of these—" Gaav kicked the stony border of one of the flowerbeds. "—to make that stick." 

Uncle Zel nodded. "Gravos and Jillas have already volunteered." 

And were already surveying the space they'd need to work with, meandering in our direction with Filia in tow. The crowd in the street had mostly dispersed. So had all but a single quartet of the guards. 

"Val-sama . . ." Jillas said cautiously once they were close enough for a reasonable conversation. 

"Jillas. Gravos. I didn't realize just how much you'd done for me all these years." I smiled at them, and Jillas' eye opened wide. 

"Valgaav-sama?" 

"I don't intend to use that name anymore, but yes—I remember now." Gaav's arm was still draped over my shoulders, and I leaned into it— _I'm not rejecting your name, not rejecting you, but I can't pretend to be just your servant anymore._ He might have told me that we were equals now, but it was going to take me a while to believe it. "I want the two of you to look after Filia-san for now," I added to the two beastmen. "We'll talk more once I get back from Kalmaart." Although I already knew what I wanted the two of them to do. They were both getting too old to be involved in the kind of insanity Gaav and I were likely to get into. The trick would be making them think it was their own idea . . . and convincing them there were no hard feelings. 

That left only Filia that I needed to speak to, although I was at a loss as to what to say. In the end, I settled for, "I don't suppose you noticed what happened to my lance?" just for the sake of saying _something_ , even if it was inane. Our relationship was in limbo right now: we couldn't be mother and son, but at the same time, we weren't strangers, or enemies, or friends or acquaintances or anything else I could find a word for. 

Maybe "honorary niece" wasn't such a bad way of putting it after all. 

"You left it inside." She didn't quite seem to know what to say either. "Val . . . Val-san, I . . ." 

"This is difficult for me, too." And I had Gaav standing right there by my side, offering me support. Filia didn't have any other close ties to help her through this. "For now, take some reassurance from the knowledge that the child you were trying to look after found his way to his true home. I'm where I want to be, doing what I want to do. That has to count for something. Be well, Filia-san." 

Gaav took that as his cue to transport us inside, to the room I'd nearly destroyed. Sure enough, there was my lance, leaning against the wall, right where I'd left it. There was also a young man in an acolyte's robe sweeping up the shards of a broken teacup, but the moment we appeared, he made a squeaking noise and fled down the hallway. 

"Once they realize who I am, they're going to spend the next fucking _year_ purifying this place." Gaav sounded almost gleeful. 

"We could drop in on them again in six months or so," I suggested, my hand closing around smooth wood. "Do it enough times, and they'd probably end up in a continuous cycle of purification. In ten years or so, they might even forget why they started it." 

"Or give up and knock the place down. You got everything you need from here?" 

"Yeah." I twirled the lance absently, and sighed. "If we're going up against Shabranigdo, I'm going to need a better weapon, I guess, but this one is . . . kind of reassuring." 

"Well, you've been carrying it for a while. Let me think about it for a bit and see what I can come up with. You won't have anything less than the best, because _I_ won't fucking allow it." Gaav's arms slid around me, pulling me back against his chest, and he started nibbling on my ear. 

"If you keep that up, I'm not going to be able to fit into my pants when I manage to find a pair," I told him. It was already going to be a close thing with me rapidly on my way to full hardness, hidden by the skirts of his too-long coat. The feel of the rough fabric scraping over the sensitive head of my cock was just making it worse. 

"I can think of another way to fix that. I did promise that I would mate you again if you regained your memory and still wanted it despite knowing what you were getting into—do you? Want it, I mean?" 

A long shudder ran through me, and I felt light-headed as all my blood suddenly shot south. "You have to ask?" My voice almost cracked on the last syllable. Having him inside my body, inside my mind, joined indissolubly together as we were meant to be . . . just the thought was almost enough to make me come. "Gaav . . . I miss having you inside me so much . . . I want us both to be whole again." 

"Sorry—you know I was never any good at this fucking stupid emotional-communication stuff." 

"Neither am I—so we'll just have to say what we mean. Right?" 

I couldn't see his smile, but I felt it. "Yeah." His hand slid down, cupped my erection through the fabric of the coat, and I thrust shamelessly against his palm, then pushed back against the firm bulge rubbing against my spine. We both groaned. Gaav somehow managed to exert enough control to warp space around us both, placing us in the dark with smooth stone under our feet. The air smelled damp, but I couldn't hear any water nearby. Then light flared from etheric lamps, and I knew where we were, although I hadn't been here in hundreds of years: the ritual space under the old crimson dragon aerie, with the mating circle permanently inset into the floor. We hadn't been able to use it last time, since we'd wanted to link the bond to a secondary spell, but this time it should be good enough. More than good enough, since it was dragon-sized. Last time, we'd had no chance but to cement the bond in human form, since neither of us had been able to resume our natural ones, and it had been an unbelievable mess. 

— _In there? Are you serious?_

— _Yes, in there. I don't think I've got the angle quite right, though._

— _Those dried-up old bitches I used to live with never did cover males with males._

— _And I've never done this before. Next time, I'm reading up before we try anything._

— _I can just see the look on Rashatt's face when you send him out for gay porn._

— _Might remind the fucker that his place is underneath me—and not the way you are right now, either._

Smiling at the memories, I stepped forward, out of Gaav's arms, and shucked off his coat, letting it puddle on the floor. Then I triggered my transformation for the second time in less than an hour, and sat back on my haunches, preening my wings a bit self-consciously and trying to ignore the fact that my cock was engorged and unsheathed, gleaming wetly against my stomach. 

He didn't even bother to strip, just flowed into the shape of the three-headed red dragon, half again my size and _very_ ready to take a mate. 

"I still think you look perfect like this," he rumbled, one head snaking low to tease at my cock, tongue sliding along the slick length and into the sheath, forked tip wriggling against flesh so sensitive I couldn't repress a bugling cry. 

"C-careful," I said. "You're going to make me . . . ngh . . . prem-prema- _too fast_!" 

"Then we'd better get inside the circle, hadn't we?" His third head nudged my shoulder, while the tongue of the one down below withdrew. 

"While I still remember the words," I replied shakily, and he chuckled. 

"I'll prompt you through it, if need be." 

Ritual. We crouched on opposite sides of the magic circle, each of us nicking flesh with an extended fang until we drew blood, letting a drop fall into the grooves in the stone. The circle came to life, red and white fire crackling and tangling along the lines. 

The words were in a form of Ryugo so old I didn't really understand them. I wondered if Gaav did. If so, he'd never offered to translate. 

" _Rhalek marrr sssthistal ghruk kyaljisss, rrrolat ap gothek ayates. Siir sssel, kyodat ap elissset, rhatik esssegar kendalath!_ " There was, Ceiphied be thanked, no requirement that we speak in precise unison, so long as we both got it out at more or less the same time. The circle crackled one last time, and the light melded and flared gold. It warmed my belly and sent an aching pulse through my cock as I stepped across the lines and crouched in the center, wings spread and lowered, tail twisted up and out of the way. 

Gaav paced around the edge of the circle, tail flowing out behind him in a smooth, elegant curve, until he was behind me. He nudged the underside of my tail with one of his noses, and I made a sound that was half-growl, half groan, as all three of his mouths suddenly went to work, one nibbling delicately at the barely-scaled skin, one sliding between my legs to lick at my balls and my cock-sheath from behind, and the third teasing at the hole that was waiting for him. The sensation wasn't any less maddening than his previous attentions to my cock, whose tip was now resting in a puddle it had leaked onto the floor, but although I could feel muscles tensing, I wasn't right on the edge of coming anymore. There was something missing, something I needed, and the tip of my tail twitched back and forth in frustration. 

It took infinite concentration to find the words I needed. "Fuck me, damn you!" I pushed my hips back a little for emphasis, growling. 

"Impatient, hmm?" The heads withdrew, and I snarled my displeasure. Then one more nudge. "Move your tail over . . . yes, like that. _Exactly_ like that." 

A sudden surge, and he was in me, on top of me, his teeth gripping my neck. I'd experimented with my tail, of course—I think every adolescent dragon does—but I'd never been filled like this before, deep enough to make me ache deliciously with it despite inhumanly elastic tissues and the slick fluids from his sheath easing the way. I found myself purring as I rounded my spine and pushed back until he was as far in as he would go. 

He began to move, slowly at first, pulling all the way out and then slamming back in with enough force to make me slide an inch or two forward over the stone before I figured out how to brace myself. Every time he filled me, it sent a shock the length of my erection. Both my sheath and the tip of my cock were leaking copiously, maddeningly, and still it wasn't—quite—enough, not even with the addition of a tongue tracing the edges of my left earhole and teeth nipping the length of my jaw. I wanted . . . I wanted . . . 

Then Gaav growled deep in all three of his throats and I felt his cock begin to pulse inside me. It was the first touch of his seed that made me cry out and come messily, spraying all over the stone floor as the part of me that had been shattered twenty-one years ago reassembled itself. If I'd been in human form, I would have had to blink back tears at the relief that went with the sensation of being _whole_ again, without that broken, gaping emptiness inside my head, but fortunately ancient dragons can't cry. 

I didn't want to disgrace him that way. 

Instead, I rubbed the side of my face against the jaw of his central head as he released me, tongue flicking out to taste red scales, memorizing one more thing about him. _Mine,_ I thought, purring. 

"Val." He was purring too, an odd sound, harsh and rusty, as though he'd never done it before . . . and maybe he hadn't. I hadn't been so deeply contented myself since I'd been a new hatchling, when all it had taken to make me happy was a full belly and a warm place to sleep, and he'd come into existence as an adult, meaning that he had no such memories. 

"Gaav," I murmured, and saw his jaw drop in a grin. 

"I'd like to stay here a while longer too, but we have an idiot mage to find." 

"You have to get off me first," I pointed out, and he laughed.


	23. Gaav

Vezendi was a trade city, Kalmaart's main entry point from Dils and Ralteague. Meaning that it was big and dirty and fucking crowded and you could smell it from miles away. It also provided an endless supply of paranoid horses to crap on my boots. The stupid fucking animals hated me even when I was concealing my astral body to keep from being spotted by shrine priests or nosy lesser Mazoku. 

I hadn't liked Vezendi when I'd last been there fifty years ago, and I didn't like it now. Even Seyruun, with its pain-in-the-ass ward always hovering at the edge of my awareness, was more pleasant. 

With our weapons slung across our backs, Val and I could pass for a couple of mercenary-adventurers looking for work. There was no way to keep us from standing out, since Ragradia's curse had stripped me of most of my shapeshifting abilities and Val would keep his startling draconic eyes no matter what we tried to make him look like, so I figured we would show off a bit and try to get ourselves noticed. Xellos wasn't perfect any more than I was, and if he was here, it was possible we could push him or one of his allies into acting too quickly. Once I had the slimy little cone in my sights, I'd be able to squish him like a bug. And send the remains back to Zelas in a fancy urn with a fucking sympathy card attached. Too bad I wouldn't be there to see her get it. 

Val strode steadily beside me, taking three steps for every two of mine. I felt the corners of my mouth easing upward every time I glanced in his direction, and had already noticed that I seemed to have the same effect on him. The steady pulse of the reformed mate bond, telling me that he was alive and well, was one hell of a lot easier on my nerves than the rawness it had replaced. 

I was still a bit worried about him, though. If we crossed paths with Xellos too soon, he might not be ready. A quick reassessment of his skills, now that his memory was back, had shown us what we both expected: the changes in his astral body were still throwing him off. If he had a moment to think, he could gather and release magical energies without a spell in the same way as a Mazoku, but, as he'd put it, half of the process was upside-down and backwards from what he remembered, and his bucket capacity had gone down by at least a third. His physical reflexes weren't impaired, but that fucking lance of his had no attack power on the astral, his ability to bend space again required an inverted mental effort, and his knowledge of conventional shamanism petered out around the Elemekia Flame level, since he'd never needed it as Valgaav. The breath weapon provided by his ancient dragon heritage was primarily an astral attack, but I doubted it would be enough to balance the scales. He needed a better lance and a couple of months of training to replace his old reflexes with new ones, but we had to find Taben _now_ , just in case he really was a shard of Shabranigdo. The trick to keeping a lid on old Ruby-Eye was to deal with each shard while it remained an individual. If two of them joined together, there would be hell to pay, and I wasn't interested in having the world destroyed out from under me. 

Ahead of us, the street was blocked with rubble. I blinked. It looked like something had blown out a wall to our right, then flattened the building across the street to our left. There were char marks, too. _What the . . . ?_

There were several people piling stone blocks and splintered, blackened timbers onto carts to be taken away. I grabbed the nearest one by the wrist. "Mind telling me what the fuck happened here?" 

The labourer tried to jerk his arm out of my grasp. He wasn't very successful. "Some Guild sorcerer blew up the classroom he was teaching in, that's all I know." 

"So that's the Sorcerer's Guild office?" I jerked my head in the direction of the downed wall. 

"Yeah, that would be it. Mind letting me go? I've got work to do." 

I took my hand off him and stepped back, smirking as he muttered an obscenity. Val looked at me, eyebrows raised. I gestured toward a side street. 

Since I didn't have any other obvious strings to pull right now, we'd go around to the front and ask uncomfortable questions about a certain stray Guild seal. 

It was easier than I'd expected to convince the apprentice guarding the door that we were there on behalf of the Kingdom of Seyruun—not that I'd thought we'd need to show any official documentation, but I'd expected them to at least ask for it before I intimidated them into pissing their pants. This little idiot just took one look at us and gestured us inside, then took off running for the foot of the stairs. 

Val snorted. I didn't have to ask what he was thinking. We both knew a coward when we saw one. 

There was a breeze coming from the hallway to our left, opposite the stairs. That had to be where the missing wall was, and I decided to have a look instead of just cooling my heels in the fucking front hall. 

It was a big corner room full of desks, and I chuckled once I saw what was written on the chalkboard. _Serves them right._ The spell really had made a nice mess, though. Judging from the burn marks, the caster had been standing behind the teacher's desk at the front of the room, in front of a fresh drawing of the Mazoku half of the Planes Chart with two of the sigils crossed out, and had fired the spell off straight down the gap between the two middle rows of desks. If anyone had been in its path, they'd been instantly charred to fine ash. 

"You find this funny?" The man who poked his head in through the door had a receding hairline, a rather large nose, and a droopy grey moustache—looked older to me than Taben, but then I'd kind of suspected the deaf mage had a baby face. He wore a yellow-brown robe that fitted him rather too tightly around the middle, and one of those stupid little pairs of glasses that makes people look cross-eyed. He hadn't noticed Val, who was standing against the wall to one side of the door. 

"Ironic, anyway," I said, offering him a lazy smirk. "From the looks of it, the stupid fucker not only couldn't even cancel his Gaav Flare when he realized the spell had started to work again, but he couldn't get Death Fog's sigil right, either. And you had him teaching?" 

The stranger blinked and frowned. "How did you know it was the Gaav Flare he was trying to cast?" 

"I've seen the results before, twenty or so years ago. There's no other spell that's directional, at least partially fire-based, and strong enough to blow a building apart after it's gone through a wall—it would be a real stretch even for an augmented Vice Flare, and Blast Bomb isn't a straight-line spell. Plus, why would he put the fucking Planes Chart up if he was giving shamanism lessons?" 

Another blink. "You don't look like a sorcerer." 

I let my smirk widen into a grin. "You're not the first to say so. I'm not Guild-trained, and it suits me to let people underestimate me." 

"Lucas said you were from the Kingdom of Seyruun." 

"Was that the brat's name? You might want to give him a few lessons about introductions. We're mercenaries. Seyruun's just paying the bills at the moment. Are you the head of the local Guild chapter?" 

"Dekimus the Sepia, Chairman-Elect of the Vezendi Sorcerer's Guild." The little man bowed. "Yourself? Or should I just call you 'Mr. Seyruunese Representative'?" 

"I go by 'Red' at the moment," I said. "My partner's name is Val." 

"Pleased to meet you," Val added from his position near the wall. Dekimus jumped a bit, so I guess he really hadn't noticed him. 

"That can't possibly be your name." So the little man had a pair after all. I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised—you don't get to be the leader of a Guild chapter by having no backbone. 

I shrugged. "My parents belonged to one of the Mazoku-worshipping cults. You can guess what kind of name they stuck me with. Using it causes more trouble than it's worth, especially when I'm dealing with sorcerers." It was an excuse I'd used before, one that gave me a plausible reason to answer to my real name instead of my alias if I, or someone around me, screwed up. "I'm not here to satisfy your curiosity about me, though. What I, or rather Seyruun, wants to know is why your official seal turned up at the site of a kidnapping." 

Dekimus' face went white. " _My_ seal?" 

"Unless you know another 'Dekimus Magister' who would have a Guild seal talisman." 

"The analysis they sent us said that it wasn't very old," Val added, "so if you're thinking of trying to pin this on a great-grandfather with a coincidentally similar name, don't bother." A lie, but a good lie. I repressed my smirk. 

The mage blinked. "I-I don't use my seal very often. Normally I keep it locked up in my office." 

"Then I suppose we're going to your office." I gestured for him to lead off. 

Up the stairs and around a corner. There was a roped-off corridor that we didn't enter, that looked like it probably ended in the general area of the damaged room. _Losing the wall must have destabilized that part of the building. Talk about fucking flimsy construction._

Dekimus opened a door with a muttered spell. He didn't invite us inside, and once I got a look at the place, I was just as glad, because I don't think I would have fit. Not only would I have had to duck to get through the doorway, but there was a fucking stuffed plasma dragon hanging from the ceiling right at my eye level, taking up most of the upper part of the room—who puts crap like that in their office? Other than Dekimus the Sepia, apparently. He also had a brass demon skin tacked to the wall, and a bunch of taxidermied heads mounted above the window. Disgusting. I understood keeping trophies, but I doubted he'd fought any of the creatures himself. 

Val slipped past me anyway, not waiting for an invitation, and began to poke around. I just watched, but Dekimus didn't react to the invasion of the room. 

His safe was hidden under the brass demon skin. It had a simple mechanical combination lock, possibly imported from the Outer World, and he entered the combination in a series of rapid motions that suggested he did this often. 

Open, the safe turned out to contain several stacks of papers, neatly separated into folders, a lumpy bag that might have been full of coins, and three flat wooden boxes in different sizes. Two of them contained enchanted objects strong enough to radiate energy on the astral. 

I wasn't too terribly surprised when Dekimus reached for the third one, opened it, and went white again. 

"It's gone," he said, and fell into his desk chair with a thump. 

"I'd be pretty fucking surprised if it weren't," I said. 

"There's no residue," Val said. 

I shrugged. "Hired thief, probably. The slimy little cone wouldn't have needed to come here himself just to pick the lock on a mundane safe. The only thing at all fucking odd about any of this is that it _is_ a mundane safe. In the middle of a Guild office." As I spoke, I was watching Dekimus out of the corner of my eye, but the fucker just looked confused. 

"There used to be a spelled safe there," he admitted. "Until one of the apprentices learned the Unlock spell. We disciplined him severely, of course, but I think half the advanced class snuck in and opened the thing before I discovered the spell didn't work on these kinds of locks. I didn't expect anyone from outside the Guild to be interested in our membership records, a couple of ritual objects, or a bag of brass proctors' badges. And pardon me, but . . . 'slimy little cone'?" 

"You might know him as the Lesser Beast," I said, and finally saw a spark of recognition. Stupid fucker was still mostly in shock, though. Or maybe that should be, "even more in shock". 

"Mazoku? You're saying that there are _Mazoku_ involved in this?" 

"That's the reason Princess Amelia asked us to look into this, since we were near Vezendi," Val said. "It would have taken too long to go through the regular diplomatic and legal channels. We're not sure what they're up to, but time is probably of the essence." And the best lie was closest to the truth. Val hadn't lost his touch, even after twenty years of that stupid golden dragon chit running his life. 

I was pretty sure that Dekimus was nothing but a dupe at this point, but I still had a few things I want to know. "Next question: What can you tell me about Taben the Green?" 

Dekimus blinked. " _Taben?_ Is he related to this somehow too?" 

"He's the one who was kidnapped," I said—there was no point in holding back the information. 

"Taben . . . I . . . never really had the best of relationships with Taben. Do you mind if I sit down?" 

I shrugged. "Do whatever you like, as long as you keep talking." 

"Thank you." He pulled out the chair behind the messy desk at the center of the room, and as much collapsed into it as sat. "Taben and I entered the Guild as apprentices at around the same time—I was a bit of a late bloomer and his parents pressured him to enter early, so there was a considerable age difference. We mixed about as well as oil and water, or maybe that should be gunpowder and a lit candle. To be exact, he was a precocious little brat who thought he knew everything, and I was an arrogant young man who thought much the same. We spent as much time sabotaging each other's spellwork as we did studying, and by the time it became apparent just how low his pool capacity was, our hatred for each other was thoroughly entrenched." 

"Hence the attempt to marry him off to your sister," Val said from where he was examining the books on the built-in shelf near the window. 

"That was sheer desperation on my part," Dekimus replied. "Trust me, if you were responsible for Marcellaine, you would want to get her out of the house at any cost too. People keep advising me to poison her and bury her in the backya— Anyway, Taben was blaming me for his last shipment of talisman-making supplies being ruined—I didn't actually have anything to do with it, but it's gotten to the point where neither of us is really rational about the other. Regardless, he was blaming me, and it was starting to cause a great deal of trouble, what with the election coming up next month, so yes, I did mention him to Marcellaine, and she's as desperate to get married as I am to get rid of her. Taben's family's status is a bit lower than ours, socially, but it wouldn't have been a _horrible_ match for anyone except him. And then he had to go and _leave town_ , and I've got Marcellaine complaining at me and there's an ethics committee investigating me and now the side of the building's gotten blown out . . ." Dekimus demonstrated why his hair was thinning by tearing out a clump of it. 

"Is there anyone else around who might be able to tell me more about Taben?" _Might as well wrap this up before the fucking idiot gets hysterical on me._

"He has a sister . . . Pearl, I think. No, Perella. Perella Raisten. Lives somewhere in the merchant quarter. I don't know what she can tell you, but it's likely to be more than me." 

"Right," I said. "We'll be back if we think of anything else." 

"Thanks for your time," Val added, slipping past the desk to join me at the door. 

"I hate this fucking investigation stuff," I muttered as I left the building. "So? Thoughts?" 

"The idiot doesn't know anything," Val said immediately. "From his book selection, his area of expertise is fire shaminism, not black magic, so I doubt he'd recognize a piece of Ruby-Eye if it hit him over the head with the Staff of Bone. And if I had a name like 'Marcellaine', I'd probably be a bitch too." 

Which meant Val agreed this had been a wild goose chase. It pissed me off even though we'd suspected it from the first. 

"Do you want to talk to the sister?" 

"It's either that or sit around waiting for someone to make a move," I said. 

"Which you like about as much as you do Phibrizzo." My dragon gave me a grin. "It's getting late to do it tonight, though, and I'm starting to get kind of tired." 

Sure enough, the sky was progressing past pink and on into blue and purple, headed for star-spangled black. 

"You've had a longer day than I have," I admitted. Starting the morning as a near-hatchling who couldn't fucking remember what he was supposed to be, and ending the day as a mature dragon who was rapidly regaining everything he'd lost and more . . . it should have been a crippling shock, and yet Val seemed to be bearing up well. His inner strength was incredible. 

He was worthy of me as no one else had ever been. 

I turned to face him, pulled him around, and leaned in for a kiss. He opened his mouth for me, and the low thrumming sound of a purring dragon filled the street as he sucked on my tongue. I didn't even fucking care that people were staring, much less that we were obstructing traffic—the only thought in my head was a primal assertion: _Mine!_

"What was that for?" he asked as we parted, his breath warm against my skin. He'd wrapped his left arm around my shoulders, and my hand had found the nape of his neck again. 

"Being you," I replied. 

"Mmm. Well, if that's all it takes . . ." He recaptured my mouth, although we didn't stay glued together for quite as long this time. He breathed out with a soft sigh. "We should get something to eat and try to find an inn room, I guess. I mean, we could go back, but . . ." 

_There's no telling who's watching us,_ I completed for him. Disappearing for the night might draw unwanted attention. Better to stay in Vezendi, or at least appear to, just in case. Even if it was a fucking pain in the ass. 

My fifty-year-old, fuzzy memories of a boring city were enough to find where the more wealthy mercenaries mostly stayed—the company officers and caravan guard captains. The inn and the two restaurants flanking it were nothing fancy, but they'd provide decent food, unwatered beer, and clean beds at a price that wasn't intended to turn you into a fucking beggar after one night's stay, even when you were calling for four roast chicken specials and the biggest bed in the house. 

Val ate three of the four chickens, as I'd expected—he couldn't feed off negative emotions, so he had to use physical methods to replenish himself. By the time he'd gotten to the third, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. Today had to have taken more out of him than I'd thought. He stubbornly hauled himself up to the inn room under his own power, though, not even leaning on his lance. Unwilling to give in. My dragon. 

He propped the weapon against the wall and began to shuck unselfconsciously out of his clothes as I closed the door and sealed it with an act of power. I did the same to the window, then spun out more lines of magic through the walls, floor, and ceiling. If so much as a fucking cockroach managed to sneak in here tonight, I was going to feel it. 

"Coming to bed?" Val asked, grinning. The light from a single lamp highlighted the hard, muscular planes of his naked body—not as powerful as mine, but lithe and strong, like his dragon form. From the pose he was striking, seated on the bed with his legs spread and his hand slowly sliding down his stomach, he knew exactly how much of a fucking temptation he was, too. 

I shook my head. "I've got an errand to run regarding your new lance. Plus, you need to sleep, and with you looking like that, sleep is going to be the last thing on my mind." 

Val laughed. "Of course. It's just . . . I feel a little giddy, knowing that after centuries of wanting you, I can have you any time I want. I did some reading after you left for the Barrier, and there are some things I'd like to try . . . but like you said, not tonight. After all, we have forever." 

I could feel my mood responding to his, my mouth lifting in a smile. "Don't leave the room until I'm back," was all I said—all I needed to say. 

"I won't. Don't do anything too risky." 

I nodded, then let out a breath. Concentrating, I sought out a place I'd visited only once before, and bent space. 

If anything, it was even worse than the last time I'd been here. The wailing wind whipping at the skirts of my coat and driving sleet into the side of my face hadn't changed, nor had the gigantic iron crosses that peppered the icy plain, but the dome of the temple had been shattered and fallen in on itself, and there were corpses and pieces of corpses everywhere. Not that I was unfamiliar with battlefields carpeted with dead golden dragons. There were a couple of places up in the Kataarts where they'd even ended up freeze-dried like this, with sunken, wrinkled hides stretched over still-intact bone, the slashes where they'd been wounded pulled wide open. 

Twenty years, and no one had bothered to clean up the fucking charnel house. Vrabazard's votary clan must have been even more hated among the other dragons than I'd thought, if they couldn't be bothered to bury the dead. I'd have to bring Val up here, show him that they really had gotten their just deserts. He might enjoy that. 

These weren't the bodies I wanted, though, so I bent space again, moving myself nearer to the shattered temple. Then a third time, because it didn't look like there was a way inside from ground level anymore. 

I wound up standing on the broken edge of the dome, looking down at the other charnel house, the one arranged with macabre neatness inside the walls. Bones stacked from floor to ceiling, skulls at what would have been the front, facing the crumbled corridors. Phibby would have fucking loved the place, but all it did was piss me off. Val's entire family was here somewhere, anonymous in death along with all the others. 

The triple-layered energy field at the center of the dome was gone, along with the weapon it had protected, but I could still feel a faint residue of dragon power down there—not enough to do _me_ any harm, but I would have been happier without it. Still, I wasn't leaving here without what I'd come for, so I jumped down into a broken hallway, my boots crunching on rubble. 

The skulls might have been neatly stacked, but the other bones had been tossed around at random, and some of them were buried under slabs of fallen rock. Worse, I seemed to have landed in an area were most of the contributing dragons were old and brittle-boned, which made them useless for what I had in mind. 

"Fuck," I muttered, and jumped to the top of a pile of rubble. I was closer to the center of the fallen dome than I'd thought, and the area in front of me was a sea of stone slabs. 

" _Who . . . ?_ " The faintest hint of a voice. I ignored it, concentrating on working my way clockwise around the dome. Hatchling bones . . . too bendable, delicate, and emotionally fraught. 

" _Who . . . ?_ " 

"What are you, a fucking owl?" I snapped. "The more you interrupt me, the longer it's going to take for me to finish up and leave." 

A flickering ball of light popped up out of the rubble, arched through the dark sky, and arrowed down to settle on a more-or-less level slab in front of me. It expanded into a figure—a glowing, translucent man who looked like he was hanging on to the tail end of middle age with his teeth. His eyes were liquid, molten dragon-gold, the brightest part of him. 

So I was sharing this place with the last spiritual remnant of an ancient dragon. Wasn't that just fucking perfect? 

" _What are you doing here, Mazoku?_ " 

"Picking through a graveyard. Looking for something I can use to help the only member of your race who was never a suicidal coward." Lord of Nightmares only knew why I was even talking to this idiot. It wasn't like he could do anything to stop me if I decided to walk right through him. 

" _And you think you will find that here?_ " 

I snorted. "I just need something that resonates with him. There's plenty of that here . . . although I'd hoped for a healthy bone from a close adult relative." 

" _You would desecrate the dead?_ " the apparition asked indignantly. 

"There's nothing fucking sacred here," I growled. "You let them strike you down without resistance and stack your bones up like sticks. And in the end, Galvayra ended up in the hands of the Beast-Priest. The death of your entire race was for nothing." 

The apparition couldn't seem to decide whether to turn red or white, and wasn't doing a very good job of either. I turned away from it and transported myself to another section of the dome. The dragons here had been mature at the time of their deaths, but not elderly. Much better. I flipped a couple of stone slabs out of the way with my power. They landed near the center of the dome with thunderous crashes. 

" _As long as even one remains, our race is not dead._ " The apparition flickered back into being to my left. 

"Then you're going to be in limbo for a fucking long time, because there's no way for Val to breed even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't." The femur I pulled loose was cracked across—no good. 

" _Why are you so intent on shielding him?_ " 

I bared my teeth in a snarl. "Because he's mine. He placed his life in my hands—not yours, not Ceiphied's or that arrogant fucker Valwin's. None of you gave a damn about saving him. Any claim you might have had on him, you lost long ago." Another broken bone. _Shit._

The apparition floated on past me, passing two more dead dragons before stopping in front of a ribcage. It laid its hand on the sternum, the broad, keeled breastbone that had once supported flight muscles. " _Take this._ " 

My eyes narrowed. "Why?" 

" _Because he is yours, but he_ was _ours, and limbo is at least a mode of existence._ " The apparition paused, then added, " _These are my daughter's bones. When her first egg hatched, she named the hatchling 'Val', in honour of the Airlord. It is not an uncommon name, and he would have been very young when we were destroyed, but I honour the possibility, and wish it had been in me to protect him. As a Mazoku, you would not entirely understand the nature of such attachments, but I doubt you are blind to them._ " 

No, I wasn't. The human part of me remembered, even though it didn't want to, and there was even something resonant down in the fucked-up cocktail of unexamined dragon instincts Ruby-Eye had dumped into me. I'd make a fucking horrible father, but I did have some context for the idea that went beyond my millennia of observation of the habits of physical creatures. 

"Get out of the way, then," I said, drawing my sword. 

Cut loose from the ribs, the sternum was a foot wide and nearly as long as I was tall. More bone than I needed for this, really, but it was intact and uncracked, and that was the most important part. I sheathed my sword, shouldered the bone, and bent space again, ignoring the ghost, although I could feel those fucking golden eyes drilling into my back. 

It was a bit of a relief to emerge in the old crimson dragon aerie again, ghost-free even though it was more than ten thousand years old. The sand-floored combat arena had a spray of glassy pockmarks across it from the last round of tests Val had put himself through—I'd have to remember to clean those up at some point, but not right now. 

I laid the bone down on the floor and whipped up a very small, localized sandstorm to scrub it clean of the last bits of dried ligament. Then I left it and went to the far side of the room, where a dragon-sized door opened into the former inhabitants' armoury. They'd stripped a lot of the contents before leaving for their last battle, and I'd pilfered a fair amount of what had been left over the years since I'd moved in, but it was still far from empty. When I came out again, I was carrying a human-scale longsword and a dagger with a dull, silvery blade. The worksmanship of both was crap, but I only wanted them for raw materials. 

Steel, orihalcon, dragon bone. And one more material, but I didn't have to gather that one from an outside source. 

I laid everything out, sat down cross-legged in the sand, and closed my eyes, because the physical was just a useless fucking distraction to me right now. 

On the astral, the metals were unchanged, but the bone glowed inwardly with blue-white fire. Which was perfect. I called to mind the basic form I needed, the proportions, and extended a talon/finger. Pointing at the bone, I ordered it to reshape itself to match my mental picture—it had belonged to a greater dragon, so it should know how to shift. And if it didn't, I'd fucking convince it to learn. 

It wriggled, rattled against the sand, slimmed and stretched and divided itself to form a handle. Step one, complete. 

Step two was simpler, but required more effort: work the metal into two leaf-shaped blades of orihalcon-steel alloy, sharp and magic-repellant, force maintenance enchantments on them despite the orihalcon's resistance, and introduce them into the bone at each end. At the end of that, I had something shaped like Val's current lance and maybe a shade more useful thanks to the properties of dragon bone and orihalcon . . . but I wasn't finished yet. 

I spun off a thread of my own substance, introducing it very carefully into the dragon bone. I'd never tried anything quite like this before, and if I'd been doing it on behalf of anyone but my dragon, I doubt I'd have been able to muster the patience. Watch the energies and work with them, weave Ceiphied-given dragon power together with Ruby-Eye's redness and keep _everything_ in balance, each thread clean and unknotted. It made my brain hurt, and not in a good way . . . but if Val decided he wanted his hybrid power back, I was going to have to do this on a much larger scale. It was what I _should_ have done the first time, but I'd been too fucking preoccupied by the novelty of trying to keep a soul and a physical body together as a unit to realize just what a mess I was making of him. 

I snapped off the thread when the lance began to scintillate golden with mixed energies and take on a life of its own. The amount of power involved was tiny—like drawing a single bucket of water from the ocean—but the loss was permanent, as it had been every other time I'd spawned a new Mazoku. Or in this case, a new chimera. _Val had better appreciate this._

I opened my eyes on the physical world and watched the lance wriggle against the sand as it tried to find a form it would be comfortable in. The lesser blade curved into a shape like a dragon talon, and the shaft darkened and textured itself into something like black leather, just grippy enough that the wielder's hand would only slide along the surface if the movement was intentional. A convex boss an inch or so across appeared just below where the major blade joined the shaft, and a tracery of gold crawled over the flats of the blades themselves, forming mysterious and likely meaningless symbols. Then it seemed to settle, happy at last. 

I stood up, slapped the sand off my coat, then bent down and grabbed the handle of the new chimera. Threads of magic tickled over my fingers, tasting and identifying, and that lump at the base of the main blade split to reveal a golden, slit-pupilled eye as power shot the length of the lance's shaft. Black energy crackled along the blades, expanding them to twice the size of the metal alone, and I spun the weapon in my hands. The balance was perfect, and when it struck the ground, it bit into the layers of protections there and created a small explosion that sent molten glass flying everywhere. 

"Good," I said out loud. "But from now on, don't start up until you're told. The idea is that no one's supposed to know that you're a fusion magic chimera." 

It must have understood that at least a little, because the eye blinked shut again, and the crackling energy went away. Maybe I was getting a bit better at this in my old age after all—if you didn't count Valgaav, who had already had a fully-formed personality, the last Mazoku I'd created had been Rashatt, and getting him to take my orders had been like milking a rock. 

The chimera-lance, unlike my idiot General, was exactly what I'd intended it to be: capable of channelling the wielder's magics and repelling those of others even in its inert state, the blades razor-sharp and permanently enspelled to stay that way. I'd leave it to Val to name it, since it was really going to be his minion even though I'd spun it from my power. 

The moon was close to setting by the time I returned to the hotel room in Vezendi, but there was still enough light for me to see the curve of Val's cheek and jaw against the pillow. I set the chimera aside, stripped quickly to the skin, and slipped into bed, curling my body around his, smiling as he snuggled closer. I could, and would, spend hours just watching him sleep. 

_My dragon, you're making a sentimental fool out of me, and do you know what? I don't fucking care._


	24. Taben

I woke up lying in an alleyway. 

_What?_

How the hell had I gotten here? The last thing I remembered was that damned Mazoku, Xellos, at the inn in Seyruun. 

This wasn't Seyruun. I barely even had to look around to be able to tell. The buildings in the White Magic Capital were constructed from remarkably homogeneous materials, and the walls to either side of me were sandstone, not grey granite strongly flecked with quartz. 

_Familiar_ sandstone, I realized, and a hollow feeling started up in my stomach. _No! No, I can't be back here!_

A gust of wind blew in, slapping me in the face with the smell of smoke, and it was at that moment that I realized something else horrible. 

My Ear was gone. 

You'd think I would have noticed at once that it was missing, but when something you take for granted vanishes, it can take a while to localize the problem beyond _something is really wrong_. And there was a _lot_ of "really wrong" here. 

I needed to find my way to the Temple of Ceiphied—that was my best chance for help right now. They'd know which artificer to contact to get me another Ear, and would pay for it as they did for anyone in true need. It shouldn't take long once I had myself oriented. 

After all, I'd lived in Vezendi all my life up until a couple of months ago. I knew the streets like the back of my hand, or I'd like to believe I did. 

I pushed myself to my feet, dusted off my robes . . . and was instantly knocked down again as the ground shook under my feet. 

What in hell . . . ? 

The second time I got up, I leaned against the nearest wall to make sure I stayed that way, and shuffled to the mouth of the alleyway. I looked up and down the street, spotted a particular ridiculous statue on a corner, and oriented myself: I was on the western side of the city, in an area that was mostly lower-middle-class residential. Merchant's clerks and civil servants and journeyman-level craftspeople and their families. I'd have to cross most of Vezendi to get to the temple, and there was a disturbing column of smoke rising from the city center. Even more disturbing, the street was deserted, although it should ordinarily have been busy at this time of day . . . time of day . . . When was it? There was a fine layer of cloud covering the sun, or . . . was that more smoke . . . ? 

I began to run, staggering as the ground shook again. All wrong. So very wrong. 

— _too long_ — The words flashed through my consciousness and vanished, as though I was seeing them in very fine print at the lower edge of my Ear. I ignored them. 

— _less effect if you're too impatient. Watch._ — 

More shaking drove me to my knees as I reached Fountain Street, the city's main east-west thoroughfare. The cobblestones were wet underneath me, water spattering from ruptured pipes. It spewed from the broken fountain that had once had a statue of Duke Larimar III at the center, pattering around me like rain. 

Past that point, the buildings looked like a monster had been chewing on them, the street full of wet rubble, smoke rising from broken roofs. My staggering run gradually became more of a climb, until I hit an area where there was no distinguishing the street from what had been the buildings: everything was uniformly distributed rubble, flattened by some massive explosion. 

I found the first body there, or rather the first _half_ -body. I thought it was a whole person, maybe even a live one, until I tried to pull him out of the rubble and saw the guts slithering along behind. I dropped his cold, clammy hands, staggered a few steps away, and vomited helplessly, unable to concentrate enough to cast even such a simple spell as Inner Still. Even when my stomach was empty, it continued to spasm—I had _touched a dead body_ and it wasn't going to let me forget it. It took another ground-vibration dumping me on my rump to shock it into steadying. 

— _not enough_ — 

— _wait_ — 

Shakily, I staggered away from the body and pulled myself up to the peak of a roof that seemed to have gotten blown off someone's house mostly intact, only to discover that the ground beyond fell away in a great slope of rubble mixed with earth. A crater. I was looking down into a crater. The center of Vezendi was gone. And at the bottom . . . 

There were maybe fifty of them, mostly women and children. Surely they couldn't be the only survivors from among the population of an entire city . . . but the cold creeping down my spine told a different, less optimistic story. Surrounding them were . . . creatures. Not trolls or goblins or berserkers or anything that simple, but unique humanoids the likes of which I'd never seen before. 

Mazoku. 

They all stood together in a knot, facing the center of the crater, and what I saw there I couldn't believe at first. I whispered a Boost Vision spell . . . and still couldn't believe it. 

At the exact center of the crater stood a massive throne made of human bones—massive because it had been made to match the scale of the occupant. 

Maryuu-oh Gaav sat with his elbow propped on a skull, looking bored . . . although a lazy sense of menace coiled around him. He'd discarded the blue coat I'd most recently seen him wearing, and found one in familiar, garish yellow-orange to replace it. It should have looked ridiculous, but instead, it felt threatening, like the bright colours of a poisonous snake. His sword leaned against the arm of the throne, near at hand. 

He made an absent gesture with his right hand, and one of the Mazoku separated a middle-aged woman from the group of humans and threw her to the ground in front of him. Some words were exchanged—I couldn't tell what, I'd never been that good at lip-reading—and Gaav made another negligent gesture. 

The woman turned grey and disintegrated as thought she'd been hit with a Blast Ash. 

I found myself gagging again, but all I had to bring up was a pitiful amount of bile as memories of Gaav-as-Red ran past my mind's eye—dragging me out of a burning inn, scowling as he told his story of being chased by half the feline population of Seyruun, sparring with Val at the edge of our camp in the evenings. 

The revelation of his identity at the palace in Seyruun had briefly given me the feeling I was going crazy, but this . . . this felt like betrayal, and it hurt. The Boost Vision winked out as I curled in miserably on myself. 

"Not enjoying the show?" 

The words appeared in letters of red fire a few inches from my nose. I jerked my head up to discover that there was someone standing over me. No . . . not _someone_. I would have been lying if I'd claimed that I didn't recognize him, although he had changed a number of things about his appearance since last night. 

Val wore only loose off-white drawstring trousers and a pair of soft shoes. Broad, feathered black wings sprouted from his bare shoulders, and he'd cut his hair down to something less than shoulder-length, holding it back from his face with a headband. Sharp brown lines slashed across his face . . . but the most noticeable difference was the horn sprouting from the middle of his forehead. 

In his right hand, he held an odd black lance with blades made of burning, pure-white power, and his smile was as wintry-cold as his eyes. 

"What happened to you?" I asked. Or at least, I thought that was what I asked. For all I could tell without my Ear, it might have come out as, "twenty-five brau demons dance on the head of a pin". 

"This was always my true form. If people were deceived by my 'naive little dragon' act . . . well, that was always its purpose. There are times when it's useful not to be immediately recognizable as a General-level Mazoku." 

He patted me on the head with his left hand. Then he dug his fingers into my hair and used it to yank me to my feet, bringing tears to my eyes. 

"Gaav-sama is waiting for us, and it wouldn't do to disappoint him, don't you think?" Everything else was blurred by the water in my eyes, but the letters of fire were painfully clear. A detached part of my mind wondered if I was even _seeing_ them as such, or they were just appearing inside my brain. 

General-level Mazoku. It was difficult to believe. Val had seemed like such a friendly person, infinitely easier to get along with than Gaav-Red, but everything about him now, from his expression to the tingling hint of power I could feel where his fingers rested against my scalp, suggested that that friendly young man had been a lie. 

The world wrenched around us, and my mind reeled. We weren't on top of the fallen roof anymore, we were standing in front of Gaav's throne . . . or at least Val was standing. I'd lost my balance and pitched forward onto my knees the moment he'd let go of my hair. But I couldn't take my eyes off the Chaos Dragon. It was as though I were a mouse hypnotized by a snake. 

Gaav's nostrils flared slightly as he gazed down at me, and I think my Ear would have transcribed something like "Hmph" at that point. His gaze flickered to Val, still standing near me, and they exchanged a few words. Val prodded me with his foot. 

"Move, mage. Gaav-sama wants a closer look at you." 

I had no choice but to stagger to my feet and take three steps forward. Gaav watched me all the while, the blue of his eyes so cold that I would have sworn I saw endless black in their depths, as though they were windows on the Sea of Chaos itself. 

I tried to drop to my knees again—I'd have done anything, even grovelled to him, to escape that scrutiny—but a large, heavy hand closed over the top of my head, and I ended up dangling from his grasp like a doll. Seeing the Chaos Dragon day in and day out had kind of made the sheer scale on which his human shell was built . . . not worth noticing, I guess, but I was reminded now of just how ridiculously big he was. 

I doubted I'd forget again. 

There was a pressure inside my useless ears. I tried to ignore it at first, but it built rapidly into pain, and I twisted in Gaav's grasp as something hot and wet began to flow down the sides of my neck. 

"I don't have time to give you special treatment, little mage." Not letters of fire this time, but a pounding pulse inside my dead ears that somehow took on meaning inside my brain. Was this what hearing was, this horrible, inescapable sensation? "Your bucket capacity means that you'll be marginally useful as a minion, but I can't waste my time scribbling fucking notes in the air every time I need you to do something." 

He finished up by not just letting me go, but throwing me back toward the watching Mazoku. I landed on my rump and skidded, biting into my tongue. Then I picked myself up, spitting blood. 

"No," I said. Hearing my own voice, small and quavering, for the first time ever. "I'll die before I ever serve you." Enough was enough. I hadn't given in to my Voice, and I wasn't going to give in to him, either, Dark Lord or no Dark Lord. 

"I wasn't offering you a choice. Tezk, keep an eye on this fucking idiot. If he manages to kill himself before I'm ready for him, I'll take it out of your hide." Gaav's teeth flashed in a smile as he gave the order. Anticipating torturing one of his own servants. _I really never did know you, did I?_

— _and now for the final touch_ — 

One of the Mazoku, an orange-skinned being with patches of exoskeleton and tentacles growing from the small of its back, stepped forward. It was naked, hairless, and, as far as I could tell, sexless. The tentacles snaked toward me. 

"Don't you dare touch my brother!" A figure separated itself from the knot of women and children. Flyaway dark hair coming loose from its braids, skirt filthy with mud and soot, blouse embroidered in a familiar pattern. Placing herself between me and the Mazoku. 

"Perella, _NO!_ " My own voice beat futilely against my ears. The orange tentacles drew back, their end becoming points, and then began to throw themselves forward again. 

Blood exploded all over the ground. 

I screamed. 

Suddenly, everything around me slowed. 

"I can stop it, you know." The Voice was almost comfortingly familiar. 

"You—" I choked out. 

"If I don't, all of them are going to die, and you're going to become a low-ranking Mazoku under the command of the Chaos Dragon. Which would be a nuisance for me. Don't fight me this time, Taben." 

I didn't want . . . but . . . Gaav, or the Voice, and Perella dead . . . Oh, Ragradia. I'd never thought I'd see my sister again. I'd thought she was better off without me. I'd wanted her to have a _life_. And now . . . nothing. Nothing at all. My eyes burned with unshed tears. 

_I'm going to make you_ pay _for this._

"Do it," I whispered, and felt my voice begin to shape other words. Chaos Words. But they weren't being formed under my command. 

" _Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood that flows, buried in the flow of time._ " 

Power tingled in my hands, flowed through me, and I could feel pressure building in my head again. It felt as though my brain was being squeezed, but I didn't care—I knew it was just my stupid Mazoku allergy, and whatever spell I was chanting was potent black magic, beyond anything I'd ever attempted to cast. 

" _In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness. Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess!_ " 

Bitter flavour on my tongue as my cupped hands rose to direct the ball of energy that had formed between them. 

" _DRAGON SLAVE!_ " 

Sensation of tearing and— 

— _this is all wrong_ — 

—the crater disappeared. 

I was standing in a pocket of strange, roiling darkness. Standing to my left, smiling gently at me, was a figure in priest's garb, topped by a dark cape. Lurking on my other side was a man dressed in a knee-length tunic slit up the sides, who wore a necklace made from shrunken human skulls—I would have liked to believe they were actually monkey heads, but under the circumstances, I doubted it. 

_Xellos._ I tried to name the first man, or rather Mazoku, but my body wouldn't obey me. Instead my mouth said, "Not badly done, although you did draw it out a bit." And although I still wore my Ear—indeed, I doubted I had ever lost it—I could also hear the words, pulsing inside my head. 

"See? I _told_ you!" said the man with the skull necklace. 

"My most sincere apologies," Xellos said, dropping smoothly to one knee, placing his staff on the ground at his side. "As nothing like this had ever been attempted before, my master felt it best to err on the side of caution. You may, of course, discipline me as you wish, my lord." 

"You belong to my Greater Beast," my body said thoughtfully. "And you . . . to Dynast?" 

"I am Xellos, Beastmaster-sama's loyal Priest, and therefore yours as well, my lord. Grau was sent with me by Dynast-sama, as an observer." The Beast-Priest kept his head bowed. 

"Hmph. Is this truly Lord Ruby-Eye? In this pathetic human body?" 

"Despite its limitations, the body is somewhat useful as camouflage. I believe I will keep it for now." 

I had no voice of my own to scream with. 

I had no blood of my own to run cold. 

Inside, I did both. Felt both. 

_NONONONONONONONO!!!!!_

My cry fell away into blackness—into blankness. There was no sign that even the fragment of Shabranigdo that was wearing my body like a suit of clothes had heard. 

"As you wish, my lord," Xellos said smoothly. "Your instructions?" 

"What of the other portions of myself?" 

"The locations of four of them are unknown. One lies imprisoned in the far north by the remains of Ragradia's power. And one . . . has been destroyed." 

My body jerked. " _Destroyed?_ How? _Tell me._ " 

"It was killed by spells channeling the power of the Lord of Nightmares, some twenty years ago—with some assistance from its human host, who . . . did not approve of our agenda. However, the sorceress who did the killing will not be a factor for the next few months. Phibrizzo-sama was also destroyed by a similar spell at the hands of the same sorceress." 

"And my Chaos Dragon has gone renegade." 

"Gaav has always been as much dragon as chaos." 

Red light flashed from my hand, and Xellos was blown some twenty feet, forcing Grau to dodge. The Beast-Priest struck an invisible obstacle and slid to the ground. At some point, his left arm and part of his torso had been vapourized. 

"He is still Gaav _-sama_ to you, Priestling. Of all my creations, I lavished the most care upon him, built him up in the most intricate detail. He is still a fine weapon and a massive power for destruction. We merely need to remind him who his master is." 

Xellos used his staff to lever himself back to his feet. He showed no signs of pain. "Forgive me, Ruby-Eye-sama. I meant no disrespect. It is merely that it has been a very long time since Gaav-sama decided to follow his own path. I can scarcely remember the days when he shared our purposes!" 

A long silence. Grau shifted uneasily. 

"One lost," Shabranigdo said at last. "If we are fortunate, it was the least of the Shards, the smallest portion of my mind. We will expand the search for the others. I assume the one that Ragradia sealed is defended?" 

"Yes, Ruby-Eye-sama—there is an entire clan of dragons, golden and black, in the area." 

"Dragons . . . like that little pet of Gaav's. We shall have to see about doing something about them . . . and about him." 

_Val . . ._ I felt sick, despite not having control of my stomach . . . then even sicker, as I realized that my memories of the young dragon had been tainted by the bizarre Mazoku version of him that Xellos had included in the illusion designed to tempt me into setting Shabranigdo free within me. There was something just too appropriate about that version of Val, as though the Mazoku General were someone he really might have been. Maybe even someone he _had_ been, once. I didn't know enough about his ties to Gaav to be able to say. 

Was it wrong to pray to Ceiphied on behalf of a renegade Mazoku and his dragon, in the hope that they would both be alright?


	25. Val

I woke to early morning light and a soft growl from Gaav, whose body was wrapped around mine on both the physical and the astral planes. 

"Is something wrong?" 

"Looks like it was fucking Ruby-Eye after all. I just felt the balance shift. Shit." 

"We'll get rid of it," I said. 

He sighed. "Well, on the bright side, this chunk didn't disrupt things as much as the one that had its claws in that idiot Rezo, so it _might_ be weaker. Of course, that means it might also be a lot smarter." 

I nodded. I remembered his contingency plans for dealing with Rezo-Shabranigdo. None of them were pleasant to contemplate. He'd had the cities he was going to destroy to gain the necessary power to go up against his creator all marked out. His strength and the partial manifestation's had been roughly equal, so he'd thought it best to use the negative emotions of millions of people to fuel his attack. Just in case. 

It would still have been better than the end of the world, though. Which was the whole point. 

"So what are we going to do?" I rolled over so that I was facing him, smoothed my fingertips over his knotted brows. "I can only see one obvious target for him: Lei Magnus." 

A grunt. "Yeah, he'll go for the others eventually . . . but he isn't going to do it directly. And since I'm not engaged in kissing his fucking ass this time, Zelas and Dynast are going to be doing most of the strategizing. Dynast is direct, but the bitch-wolf is so twisty it makes my brain hurt. Especially when she adds shit to her plans just for the sake of adding it." He began stroking my back with one big hand as he talked, half to me and half to himself. "Dynast would go after Lei Magnus first, and head-on, because he's shit at attack strategies. I'd fuck around in some other convincing location, maybe Seyruun, just long enough to make everyone think that that _wasn't_ what I meant to do, and then sneak in, pry the icicle out, and take him somewhere else to thaw. Zelas . . . will probably have some grand strategy meant to draw everyone off in two or three different directions. Which means we need to convince the fucking dragons to stay put. Or get someone to do it for us." 

"Princess Amelia," I suggested. "Or maybe . . . Filia." 

"Maybe. That golden chit's a bit scatterbrained, though." 

"She's young," I said with a shrug. 

"I'd noticed. Even after having watched her clan get slaughtered in front of her, she's still disgustingly innocent. I can't remember you ever being that young, even though you were half the age she is now when I met you." 

"I think I was already old when I was hatched." 

"That could be." A long pause. "I wonder sometimes what I did to deserve you." 

"You mean, why did I fall in love with you?" 

"Pretty much." He wasn't—quite—blushing. 

"Hmm. Well . . ." I drew it out, teasing. "First, you have to remember where I came from before you entered my life. I'd spent three-quarters of it trapped in the desert with bunch of hatchlings younger than myself and two embittered old matrons. Not exactly the best place to indulge a taste for masculine males." I ran my hand over his chest, feeling firm muscle and the light fur of hair that I didn't have myself. "I thought you were magnificent from the first moment I saw you, strong and proud . . . but that only made me want to get into your pants, and if that had been all it was, I could just as easily have jumped Rashatt." Gaav's General's preferred physical projection hadn't been too bad—if he'd made himself look ten or fifteen years younger, he might even have been halfway attractive. We'd hated each other's guts, though. "Over the years we spent together, I came to realize just how alike we were: two . . . uniquities who had given up any chance at a normal life when we discarded the ideals of our respective races. And from the first, you confided in me, and you were infinitely patient with me while I was learning how to fight, and you . . . cared, even though it was something utterly foreign to you.. Because of you, for the first time I could remember, I wasn't _lonely_." 

There was more, but it was so tangled and non-verbal that I wasn't sure how to express it. _You are my world_ went both too far and not far enough, and it didn't really _explain_ anything anyway. 

"Lonely . . . So that's what that hollow feeling is," he said. "A thousand years, and I still don't have it all sorted out. It would be so much fucking easier if I could just taste my own emotions." 

"You don't have any memories of . . . being human?" I'd never dared ask about that before—about the years he'd spent bound and powerless. But a human should have known what loneliness was. 

"Yes and no." He shifted, running his fingers through my hair. "Ragradia cursed me, and then immediately pulled a suicide strike against me and Lei Magnus. I didn't even have time to realize what she'd done to me before I died. 

"The hundred and seventy years after that are a total blank. I must have lived at least a couple of human lives, and probably more like half a dozen, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about who those people were. I was encapsulated tighter than the pieces of old Ruby-Eye." 

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," I said, feeling the smallest of tremours run through his body. 

"No, I think you should know. How I ended up where I am. And it isn't like we have anything better to do for the next half an hour. Doesn't mean it's easy to talk about, though. Powerlessness would probably be my worst nightmare . . . except that I don't dream. Even now. So. A hundred and seventy-odd years after the Kouma War, I was born into the one human life I do remember—the life of a total asshole. Literal whoreson, no known father, mother was drunk nine days in ten, and he grew up half-wild on the streets. Landed in prison for thieving, and they gave him the choice of losing a hand or joining the army. You can guess which he picked." 

"'He'?" I said softly. 

"'He', yes. Not me. I was still stuck in Ragradia's fucking encapsulation. His squad ended up on detached duty protecting some temple. The head priest there was pretty sharp. He noticed that my . . . host . . . was carrying this little knot of encapsulated dark energy around with him." Gaav smirked. "Couldn't have something like that in a temple, of course, but that priest wasn't nearly as skilled as he was perceptive. He screwed up the exorcism and broke the encapsulation open—easy enough to do from the outside—and I regained consciousness in the middle of a fucking temple to the Flarelord. So I ate my host and leveled the temple, and went on from there. I tripped over you in the desert about five years later." 

"And when you ate him, you absorbed his memories." I wanted to be sure. 

"And when I ate him, I absorbed _everything_ —memories, personality, what he knew, what he thought. Pretty vile, most of it. I've seen a lot of ugly in my life, but I don't often have to deal with anything that _petty_. The fucker deserved to die a miserable death—I just wish he'd picked a different one. Of course, I probably would have hated whoever I woke up inside." 

"I'm sorry." 

"For what?" 

I punched him lightly in the arm. "It's an expression of sympathy, not an admission of guilt. As you know very well." 

A rumbling chuckle. "All right, I'll stop teasing you. By the way, I've got something for you. Just a second." 

He unwound himself from me and got out of bed . . . although I could still feel his touch on the astral, the subtle sensation of our tails being twined together that came through even though I didn't physically have a tail right now. I sat up, never taking my eyes from him, watching his hair brush lazily against the firm muscles of his back and thighs and ass as he stepped closer to the wall and reached for the shadow that I hadn't noticed leaning there: a lance with a dark shaft and two dully gleaming blades. 

"Here," he said, turning to hold it out to me. "Might not be entirely to your liking, but it's a lot more powerful than that stick you've been carrying around." 

I reached out to accept it, but jerked to a stop with my fingers just barely brushing the handle beside his as the lance opened a single eye and looked at me. "It's . . . alive?" 

"Low-grade Mazoku chimera made from dragon bone," Gaav admitted. "Or maybe it would be more accurate to call it a lesser demon. I didn't put that much into it, so it probably isn't all that smart, but it's obedient enough." 

I blinked. So did the lance. There was a fair amount to think through there, but I couldn't afford to hesitate any more than I already had. The lesser, stupider Mazoku were like dogs: it wasn't safe to let them think you were afraid. 

I closed my hand around the warm, leathery handle of the lance and lifted it from Gaav's grasp, laying it across my lap. On the physical plane, the weapon had a shaft covered with what looked like subtly whorled black bark, although under my touch, it felt more like leathery hide. Warm, _living_ leathery hide. The blades were razor-sharp, with the odd, lead-like dullness characteristic of orihalcon alloy, and beautifully formed . . . but then, Gaav knew what made a good weapon. The balance was perfect, too—I laid the shaft across a finger to find the exact point. 

On the astral, the lance wasn't black at all. Twisting ropes of golden light wound down its length, throwing off white and red sparks. _A Mazoku chimera made from dragon bone—it's a fusion magic weapon, like the ones Dark Star made._ Which meant . . . 

I lifted the lance to chest height, making sure to keep the blades well clear of everyone and everything in the room, and exerted my will. 

Power shot the length of the shaft, and the blades exploded with crackling energy, black edged with a hint of gold. 

It didn't have the throbbing force I remembered from Ragud Mezegis, but the Dark Star Weapon had always given me the sense it was fighting me, on some low and subtle level. There was none of that here. This lance was perfectly obedient. 

I relaxed my will, letting the crackling blades vanish, and the lance blinked at me enigmatically as I laid it down again. The golden eye could as easily have been a dragon's as a Mazoku's, and although it had startled me at first, it didn't bother me now. 

"Does it have a name?" I asked Gaav, who was still standing beside the bed, watching me. 

He shook his head. "I figured I'd leave that to you. After all, it's yours." 

I looked down at the thing, and felt my mouth stretch into a smile. "Khirr," I said. Ryugo for _claw_ , one simple word ending in a low growl. "Your name is Khirr." 

It gave me another slow blink. 

"You know," I said, looking up at Gaav, "the appropriate gift for one member of a newly-mated couple to give another is either flowers or a freshly roasted whole sheep with lots of rosemary and garlic, depending on which of those bitter old bitches I used to live with you wanted to listen to, but I think I like this better." 

We both chuckled—the idea of either of us giving the other flowers was just too ridiculous. 

"I don't have anything I can give you in return," I said, picking Khirr up and gently setting it down on the floor on the far side of the bed, "but I'd bet I can at least make you purr." 

"Val . . ." Oh, yes, I had his complete attention. Fire was kindling in the depths of those blue eyes, and his cock was starting to swell. There were so many things I wanted to do to that cock, so many things I wanted to try with that magnificent, muscular body of his—with both of his bodies, the human and the dragon. But we'd have to stick to the former for now unless we wanted to destroy the building. 

"Sit down," I said. "And spread your legs." 

"Giving me orders now, are you?" But his tone was good-natured enough as he said it, and he was already positioning himself on the bed. 

"We're supposed to be equals in this relationship, remember?" I grinned at him as I settled between his spread legs. 

"I just didn't expect you to take to it so quickly." 

"Does that mean you're sorry you said it?" I asked teasingly, beginning to explore him with hands and mouth at a point just below where his ribcage ended. He was unexpectedly sensitive—I could feel his skin shiver faintly under my tongue—and his human skin tasted different from his scales, saltier and less metallic . . . but both were delicious to me. 

"No," he said. "No, not sorry. You're . . . Son of a bitch, Val . . ." He made a low, indescribable, wanton sound as my hands caressed his thighs and my tongue dipped into his navel. He certainly wasn't just _half_ -hard anymore now. 

I wasn't going to be able to take his entire cock into my mouth, I knew. It just wasn't practical, given the size of it, proportional to his larger-than-life height. So instead, I curled both hands around it and raised the tip to my lips. He growled softly as I took a tentative taste, and I felt myself go from just interested to leaky-hard too. I hadn't expected his obvious pleasure to be such a turn-on, but it was, intensely so. 

He grabbed my arms as I began to lavish my attentions on the huge head and especially the leaking slit at its tip, his fingers digging into my flesh. While the astral energies threaded through my body meant that I couldn't actually bruise, the pressure was enough to make me feel a deep ache. As a measure of his need to balance and control what he was feeling, and therefore the effect I was having on him, it was . . . more than encouraging. 

I changed tactics a bit, taking more of him into my mouth and running one hand up and down his shaft in a quick, steady rhythm while I slid the other further back. His balls were huge and heavy against my palm, and he swore through clenched teeth as I cupped them and began to roll them gently. When I lightly pinched soft skin, he began to purr. It didn't sound any less rusty this time, but I was starting to think that that was just normal for him. The sound, and the thought, would have made me smile if my mouth hadn't been full. 

He was completely unguarded right now, and yet still so strong and so proud . . . a special face I doubted he had ever shown anyone else in all of his long years of existence. My mate. I whimpered softly and moved my hips against the blankets. _My_ mate. _Mine._ I still scarcely believed it—that after all these years, he was finally returning my feelings. _My_ Gaav, _my_ Chaos Dragon. Mine _forever_. 

Now it was my turn to begin helplessly purring, the vibration beginning low in my throat and spreading through my chest and neck and head to where I held him in my mouth. 

" _Fuck_ , Val, I'm— _raarrgh!_ " 

I felt the wave travel up from his balls, pulsing the length of his shaft, but the force with which he came still took me by surprise. I couldn't swallow quickly enough, and some of his seed spurted from the corner of my mouth, dripping down my chin. Messy, but I didn't mind. In fact, as I released his softening cock, I wiped my fingers along my chin and licked them off slowly, smirking, very aware of blue eyes watching my every move. 

I wanted to take as much of him inside me as I could. This would do for now. 

"Your turn now." He was still purring, and it leant his voice an extra resonance . . . not that it needed any, in my opinion. 

I didn't try to fight him, curious as to what he wanted to do, and found myself being lifted and turned until I was sitting between his legs with my back leaning against his chest. Big hands stroked my torso, my arms, gently teasing before one of them found its way down between my thighs and began to stroke me rhythmically. I thrust shamelessly up to meet him, because the damned bedding hadn't been nearly enough stimulation, and I was hard and leaking and he had his hands on me with the intent of getting me off and I'd thought it would never happen again after that confused mess of a ritual when we'd first mated and I was purring so hard my entire body was vibrating and oh please more and I love you so much— 

" _Mine._ " The deep rumble of his voice in my ear, the word spoken for me alone. Then he bit the nape of my neck, gently, and even as a symbolic action performed with blunt human teeth, it shot lightning through me. I arched and wailed and closed my hand over his, squeezing his fingers, pressing them against my cock as I came and came and came. 

Afterwards, I rested my head against his shoulder, feeling a bit limp, and listened to the deep, bone-rattling vibration of his purr. We stayed that way for several minutes before he nudged me. 

"We should clean up and get dressed," he said. "We have work to do today, even if it's a pain in the ass." 

"We do? You've figured out where Taben—where the Shard of Shabranigdo—is, then?" My understanding had been that we'd need a sign from the Lord of Nightmares to find the Shard if it didn't want to reveal itself, but maybe Gaav's millennia of experience had enabled him to come up with something I hadn't thought of. 

"Not yet, but we know his sister is somewhere in this city." 

I blinked. "I didn't think she was important anymore. I mean, she can't possibly know where Taben is . . ." 

A half-growl. "Think. How did Lina Inverse succeed in defeating the Shard that Rezo hosted?" 

_She used a spell invoking the power of the Lord of Nightmares._ But that was the wrong answer, the too-obvious one. And it had nothing that I could see to do with Taben's sister. I ran little Val's memory of the story through my head. _Oh. Of course._

"There were two factors," I said. "First, the spell known as the Giga Slave, focused through the Dark Star Weapon Gorun Nova. That was the immediate cause of the Shard's destruction, but there was another one: Rezo the Red Priest was fighting to hold the Shard back. Without his efforts, it might have been able to dodge the spell, although I doubt it could have blocked it. And Rezo was woken to act by Zelgadis, his grandson, who might have been the last person anywhere that he cared about or had any kind of personal relationship with. So Perella Raisten might be able to help us with the Shard." 

"Exactly. Thing is, I'd bet Xellos knows that too. Which means he'll go after her. My guess is that we've got a day of lead time before things slow down enough for him that he'll have time to question the fucking Shard about Taben's relatives—assuming that the Shard will cooperate. Before that happens, we need to move this woman to somewhere safer, probably Seyruun. Whether or not she wants to go." 

Which meant that we would ask first, then kidnap her if she wouldn't agree. Easy enough to do, either way. 

No human was a match for the two of us. 

Magic flickered over my skin, cleansing—there would be no time for a leisurely bath today. We couldn't be certain that Gaav had guessed Xellos' timetable correctly, which meant that we had to move as fast as we could. 

We dressed quickly. The harness I'd been using to carry my old lance when I didn't need to have it at the ready fit Khirr quite well, and the weapon chimera seemed happy enough slung across my back. Gaav solved the problem of what to do with my old lance with ruthless efficiency, teleporting it away. 

After we left the room, however, we were forced to slow. The only information we had on Perella Raisten's location was Dekimus' vague mention of "the merchants' quarter", which might not even be accurate. The innkeeper had never heard of the woman—unsurprising, in a city this size—but he was able to give us very general directions that matched up with Gaav's old memories of the layout of the city. 

The merchants' quarter itself was a rabbit warren of narrow streets, each catering to a different kind of commerce in imported goods. Fabric, spices, herbal medicines, sorcerers' paraphernalia . . . I lost track after the first few blocks. I was too occupied with questioning passers-by to spend too much time looking at the shop signs, anyway. 

This wasn't the first time we'd had to hunt together for something small and seemingly unimportant in a large city, and we had it down to a science. I was the one who asked the questions—Gaav found it humiliating to do what amounted to begging for information, and he tended to develop an intimidating aura after the first few conversations. Which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't tended to scare people witless, making it difficult to get anything useful from them. I didn't actually enjoy talking to all those idiots either, but since it was for his sake, I endured it. 

It was in the street devoted to dealers in imported pottery that we finally found someone who knew Perella Raisten. 

"Why would you be looking for her?" the elderly woman asked suspiciously. 

"We have a message for her from her brother," I said. "Please, it's important. He's in a great deal of trouble." 

She scowled at me, the deep wrinkles on her face making her look like some kind of monster. Even without such a sour expression contorting it, her skin had the texture of oak bark. And Gaav's looming presence behind me didn't seem to intimidate her. "Do you even _know_ her brother? Describe him to me." 

"His name is Taben the Green. He's about so tall—" I gestured. "Dark hair that tends to stick up in spikes. Dark eyes. He wears a magical device consisting of a heavy earring linked to a monocle. He's a sorcerer specializing in talismans." 

"Hrmph. All right, you've at least seen him. I suppose I can tell you where to find the Raistens." 

Her directions sent us back the way we'd come, into a rabbit warren of narrow back streets behind the sorcery sellers' shops. Down a flight of stairs to an odd, oblong courtyard, and up again, third left, second right, past the dry fountain with the broken statue of some random duke at the center— 

Someone screamed . . . and at the same moment, I felt the pressure of a Mazoku presence that wasn't Gaav's, and had the sense of something icy breathing down the back of my neck. _Dynast._ Not the Dark Lord himself (unless he was more than an order of magnitude weaker than Gaav, which I doubted), but either his General, Sherra, or his Priest, Grau, neither of whom I'd ever met. Plus at least one lesser Mazoku. 

There was only one possible reason for them to be here, and it didn't bode well for us. 

Gaav immediately bent space around himself, teleporting up into the air so that he could see what was going on, then dropping, cannoning down on something out of my direct line of sight. It took me precious seconds to follow him, mouthing curses all the way and wishing for my Mazoku powers back. 

I slammed my wings out, hovering in the sky over the small backyard. It was rather crowded, with five strange Mazoku, three humans . . . and one pissed-off Chaos Dragon. Gaav had his sword out, and everyone else was staring at him. 

The humans were probably a family: a dark-haired woman who might have been in her late twenties, a man of about the same age, and a toddler (probably a girl judging from the clothes they'd dressed it in, but just then I couldn't have cared less). The man had blood soaking into his trousers, and the woman was trying to hold a pad of folded cloth to his injury with one hand and keep a grip on the little girl with the other. Meanwhile, they were all being eyed hungrily by four lesser Mazoku, who were no doubt enjoying the rich meal of pain and terror. 

Of the Mazoku, I recognized the one at center as Dynast's Priest, Grau, from descriptions Gaav had given me long ago. His human form was perfect, short and heavy-set, with dark skin and ice-white hair. The others were barely humanoid, lacking either the power or the skill to tune their physical projections. All four were asymmetrical, and horns, oddly-textured skin surfaces, and more unusual features abounded. One even appeared to be exoskeletal, looking like a cross between a preying mantis and a fiddler crab made of ice. 

I dropped down nearer to the little human family, pulling Khirr from my back and raising it in a defensive position. I wanted to fight so badly that I could taste it, but I also knew that our purpose here was something else entirely. I wasn't going to make Gaav's plan fail just in order to sate my own bloodlust . . . and in all honesty, I wasn't sure I would have been able to take Grau, not when I was still half-crippled by my own reflexes. So I snarled in frustration and went into defense mode, running the Chaos Words for Windy Shield through my mind and preparing to guard the humans. 

"The slimy little cone's working you hard, isn't he, Grau?" From his tone, Gaav had to be smirking. "It's beneath my dignity to fight a little pissant like you in person, but I'm fucking bored and I figured you might provide me with a few seconds of amusement." 

"You think you can beat _me_?" Grau snarled back. He held a warhammer with a business end the size of his head in a two-handed grip across his chest. "You were defeated by a human!" 

Gaav chuckled. "I was defeated by Hellmaster launching a sneak attack while I was pounding your current boss and his traveling companions to pudding. And somehow, I don't think Phibby's here to save you now." 

There was a flicker of movement, too fast for the eye to follow, but my astral senses told me that Gaav had blurred to the left, swinging his sword down one-handed, Grau had blocked it with the shaft of his warhammer . . . and Gaav had slapped his left hand flat against the Priest's side and released a massive amount of power directly into the lesser Mazoku's body. With a titanic explosion, red fire erupted from the far side of Grau's torso, not to mention out of every orifice he'd intentionally created in his physical projection. The bit that spouted from his ears set some bushes that seemed to define the boundaries of the property alight. 

A soot-streaked Grau slammed into the ground with Gaav on top of him. Someone screamed as the Chaos Dragon plunged his sword into the ground beside his victim. I assumed at first that it was the young woman among the trio behind me, but the direction didn't seem quite right, and the ears of the three other Mazoku who _had_ ears had pricked up. 

And then a little boy crawled out of the burning bushes, tumbling onto the muddy lawn. He might have been six years old. 

"Dayi, no! Get away from there!" _That_ was the woman, half-paralyzed with fear. 

If I'd still had all of my old skills and been able to bend space around myself as casually as I folded my wings, I might have been able to snatch the boy out of danger before anyone else could make a move. As it was, one of the Mazoku stepped through the astral and got there first, grabbing the child with the tentacles that replaced its left arm and holding a gnarled claw to the boy's throat. 

"Let Grau-sama go!" the strange Mazoku shouted, turning its head to look at Gaav. "If you don't, I'll kill the boy!" 

Gaav snorted. "You want this?" He prodded Grau with his knee. "Fine. I don't have any use for Dynast's leftover shit, so you can have him. Not that you're going to spare the brat when you can get so much more anger and hatred off the parents by killing him. I never met a Mazoku at your level who wasn't always on the lookout for a new snack." 

I wasn't really listening, though. In the handful of precious seconds while Gaav had everyone's attention again, I was _moving_ , twisting space and focusing my will through Khirr and bringing it down on the outstretched appendages of the Mazoku holding the child. 

The clawed hand and the tips of the tentacles sheared away with a sizzling sound, and I grabbed the terrified boy and ducked and rolled backward, not willing to risk the three seconds of concentration needed for a second teleport. I came to my feet with my left arm holding the child against my body and the right raising Khirr to a one-handed defensive position. The Mazoku I'd cut was howling, an odd, distorted sound. Black energy leaked from its wounds, dripping down onto the grass, which wilted and died. 

Gaav calmly got off Grau's chest and hauled the Priest up by his singed, torn tunic. "Tell Dynast and the wolf-bitch—Dolphin too, if she's in on it—that they'd better bow out of this if they know what's good for them, because if I run into any more of their flunkies, I'm sending the ashes back to them in the tackiest fucking urns I can find." 

Without waiting for a reply, he spun through a quarter-turn and _threw_ Grau. The Priest barely had time to yell before he sailed away over the rooftops. I grinned, and everyone else watched open-mouthed, as Grau dwindled into a black dot somewhere near the horizon, then vanished. 

Gaav then turned toward the remaining Mazoku, planting his hands on his hips. He offered them all a broad smirk. "Anyone else want to give it a shot? Become a hero in the eyes of the Dark Lords? I'm sure Dynast's offered a reward for my head—he was always fond of that kind of shit." 

The disappearance of a Mazoku into the astral tends to make a faint rushing sound. It wasn't very loud even when multiplied by four. 

While Gaav retrieved his sword and sheathed it, I hauled the brat I was still holding over to his parents and sister. At least the boy was silent, if pale and wide-eyed. I could have done without him having wet his pants, though. 

"I think he's just shocky, but you'd better check him over, just in case," I told the woman, who blinked and swallowed and nodded. "Move your hand," I added, gesturing to the folded cloth she was pressing to the leg of the man whom I assumed was her husband. "I'm not the greatest white mage, but I may be able to help." Or I hoped I could. I hadn't tried any white magic at all since I'd regained my memory. 

It was nasty wound. I think it had started as a stab, but someone had torn it further open afterwards, leaving a great gaping hole in the poor bastard's leg that was going to kill him if it wasn't fixed soon. It was certainly more than a recovery spell could handle, but Filia had been a shrine priestess, and as such she'd been able to teach me the higher-level white magic spells, although I'd never really used them. 

_No time like the present,_ I told myself as I cupped my hands over the wound and began the Chaos Words. "Blessed humble hand of—" 

"Wait, Val." Gaav crouched down beside me, staring at the man's leg. After a moment, he reached out and made a plucking gesture. The stranger's breath hissed through his teeth as something that looked like a four-inch-long beetle, made of shadow and with far too many legs, was pulled out through the open wound, although Gaav never actually touched him. "If you'd sealed that inside, it would have been a pain in the ass to get rid of afterwards," Gaav said, squishing the thing between his fingers and letting the ashy grey dead-Mazoku residue sift to the ground. "Never did understand why Grau had such a fascination with parasites—it's a lazy tactic, and not very effective." 

I scowled. _Fuck. How could I forget?_

"No self-pity-fests," Gaav said firmly. "You've never fought him before—both times I ran into him, I had Raltaak with me, not you—and given all the shit we've been through in the past few days, I'm not surprised you didn't remember something that fucking obscure." 

I forced myself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Blessed humble hand of divinity," I began again, doing my best to push my mind into the proper mode. "Breath of Mother Earth, I pray thou wilt come before me, show thy great compassion to this person, and deliver them back to us. Resurrection!" 

The spell engaged, and white light burst from the palms of my hands, erasing the wound. 

"Thank you," the woman whispered. "Thank you so much! If you hadn't come, we would have been . . ." She began to sob, and her husband gathered her against him, hugging her close. When the boy and the girl began to cry as well, they each reached out an arm and brought the children into their circle too. Seeing it gave me an odd feeling. _Family._ Something I'd never really had, for all Filia's efforts. 

Gaav rose from his crouch, and then just stood there, waiting for them to calm down. I straightened up and re-slung Khirr across my back. 

It took a good ten minutes for the woman's sobs to slacken. It was only then that I spoke. 

"Excuse me, but are you Perella Raisten?" 

"Y-yes," she said. 

"I'm her husband, Samel," the man added. "And I'd like to thank you as well. It looks like we owe you our lives . . . although I get the impression you aren't here by accident." 

"We're not," I admitted. "And we need to get you to somewhere safe, or at least saf _er_. That—" I gestured at where the Mazoku had been. "—was just the first wave. The next one will be worse." 

"Worse?" Samel said, going pale again. 

"Worse," Gaav rumbled. "They're going to escalate a couple more times before they decide the price is too high and give up, if they follow the usual pattern. And we don't have the time to baby-sit a bunch of people who're only peripherally involved in what's going on." 

After a half-beat, I added, "Mrs. Raisten, do you and your brother have any other relatives still living? Or does he have any close friends in the city? Just to make sure we're aware of everyone who might be in danger." 

"Taben? This is about _Taben_?" 

I nodded. So did Gaav. 

Perella sighed. " _Ceiphied_ , what's he gotten himself involved in this time?" 

"We'll explain later," I said. "Right now, it's more important that you answer my questions—people's lives may be at stake." I frowned at her to drive the point home. 

She frowned too, brow wrinkling, which I hoped meant that she was at least thinking about it seriously. "We don't have any relatives left other than a couple of cousins, and Taben . . . wasn't a very friendly sort. When we were children, his . . . problem made people think he was . . . odd, and afterwards he put so much of his energy into studying magic—" 

"So there's no one but you," Gaav interrupted. "Good, that makes things simpler. Go get packed up. The next wave might level the house out of spite when they can't find you, so make sure you bring anything you can't bear to lose. Don't worry about more than the minimum of anything else—you'll be given money to buy replacements." 

The authority in his voice seemed to be doing its job, because Samel and Perella both shook their heads, pulled themselves together, and began to lead the children back inside the house. 

Gaav watched them go with narrowed eyes. "They've got at least one dog," he muttered. "I can feel it running around inside. Fuck. I didn't break with Ruby Eye so that I could become a fucking pet taxi service." 

"No, you didn't," I said. "What are we doing after we dump them in Seyruun?" 

He grimaced. "I don't know. I have to come up with some way to go on the offensive, but with the resources we have, it's difficult." 

_Well, shit._


	26. Zelgadis

We were just starting breakfast when one of the servants came running into the room and told us that "the red-headed man that Sir Zelgadis ordered us to watch out for" was back in the palace "with guests". The plural was what got me up out of my chair, and Amelia as well, although she didn't actually say so. 

If Gaav had brought someone with him other than Val, then either that person was another Mazoku—in which case I wanted to know who they were—or . . . well, I couldn't imagine what "or" might involve. 

The idea that "or" might be a young family with two small children and a fluffy white dog never crossed my mind. In fact, it was so far outside my expectations that I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway leading from the private wing to the Grand Entryway, and Amelia ran into my back. 

I did remember Phibrizzo too clearly to immediately discount the possibility that they were _all_ Mazoku, with their auras either deliberately concealed like Xellos' or hidden under the baleful weight of Gaav's, since the Chaos Dragon wasn't trying to pretend he was anything other than a Dark Lord just now. However, I couldn't see any Mazoku intentionally choosing the form of a hysterical toddler when they had the option of being a slightly older child, with greater mobility and the option of poking into things unobtrusively. 

"Ow," my wife said, stepping around me. "I think I bent my nose. What's— Oh." She blinked several times at the tableau before us: the young woman comforting the little girl, the boy playing with the dog, the man wincing as he lowered two overstuffed suitcases to the floor. Gaav was off to one side, talking with Val in some language that seemed to be mostly harsh consonants, growls, and hisses. 

"What's going on?" I asked. 

The woman with the little girl looked up at the sound of my voice, gasped, and shrank back. "M-monst—" 

I flinched. Fortunately for everyone, Ame took the lead at that point. "I know Zel looks scary, but he's just as human as you are, and you're hurting his feelings. My name's Amelia." She smiled warmly. "And you?" 

"P-Perella. Perella Raisten. Um . . . where are we?" 

"I guess those two didn't stop to explain much of anything, did they? Welcome to Seyruun City. Have you had breakfast yet?" 

I left the strangers in my wife's capable hands and strode over to where Val and Gaav were growling and hissing at each other. 

"Is one of you going to explain what's going on, or do I have to guess?" I asked, feeling more than a bit exasperated. 

"The Planes Chart shifted in the early hours of the morning," Gaav rumbled, and I instantly felt cold. "Judging from the angle, we're dealing with one of the weaker Shards, one that encompasses less of old Ruby-Eye's original power than I do. I'd be optimistic if it weren't fucking obvious that it's already in contact with Zelas and Dynast." 

"And them?" I nodded in the direction of the little family, currently being led away by Amelia. 

"Taben's sister," Gaav said. "The others aren't important, but I didn't think separating them was worth the fucking effort. We interrupted Dynast's Priest trying to turn them into blood spatters. Which means that the slimy little cone's half a step ahead of us, since I didn't figure out what was going on until it was almost too late." 

"It _wasn't_ too late," Val said. "That's the important part." 

Gaav shook his head. "I can't afford to cut myself any slack right now, Val. This is going to get worse, and we can't stay on the defensive. If we do, they're going to yank the world out from under us like a fucking rug." 

"I don't like that image," I admitted in a low voice. "But if we're going to talk strategy, I'd like to do it over breakfast—we were just sitting down when you turned up." 

"We haven't eaten yet either," Val said. Gaav just shrugged . . . but then, I didn't know if he needed to eat. He might have a streak of human in him, but the Mazoku in his makeup was clearly dominant. 

I took them to the family dining room, on the grounds that Phil needed to be in on this, and while Damien was too young to be an active participant, he was old enough that he should be able to understand at least some of what was going on, and as the future King of Seyruun, it would do him good to be exposed to it. Up to a point. It _wouldn't_ be good for him to be exposed to the way Gaav talked, but I wasn't so naive as to think he hadn't heard all those words before. 

Phil's eyebrows shot up as I led my little party of supernatural creatures into the room and signaled one of the servants to bring more place settings. Damien frankly stared as everyone propped their weapons against the table and sat down. And I had to figure out how to introduce a Dark Lord and his world-destroying dragon sidekick to my twelve-year-old adoptive son. 

In the end, Phil took care of it for me. "Maryuu-oh Gaav, I presume." 

"King Philionel El Di Seyruun, I presume," the Mazoku responded. "I'd say it was a pleasure, but my guess is this alliance is going to be a major embarrassment to both of us in the long run." 

"And you must be young Val Ul Copt." 

"Just Val," the dragon corrected him, with a nod. 

"You're not keeping the Ul Copt name?" I asked, surprised. 

Val shook his head. "Filia might have tried to do the right thing in the end, but I draw the line at honouring her ancestors above mine. I haven't decided yet whether I'll revert to my original family name or choose something else, but whatever I go with in the end, it won't be that." 

The look he gave me was far too . . . _heavy_ , I guess you would say, for the angry twenty-year-old who had confronted Amelia and I in the formal office only a couple of days ago, but it wasn't angry or despairing. The golden eyes weren't Valgaav's, but they also weren't Val Ul Copt's. _Who are you, really, on the inside?_

Damien pushed back his chair and got up to offer a proper bow, as he'd been taught. "Damien Vo Kir Seyruun, second heir to the throne. Honoured to meet you." Then he sat down again and said, a lot less solemnly, "Is that a real sword? How much does it _weigh_?" 

Gaav snorted, and the corner of his mouth turned up in an amused smirk. "About twenty pounds. For me, that's a one-handed blade, even if I have the hilt on this one rigged up for hand-and-a-half. Go through a dragon armoury, and you'll find human-scale weapons weighing fifty or sixty pounds, easily." 

The servants came in with the additional place settings at that moment, preventing me from asking where and when he'd ever been inside a dragon armoury. The answer would probably have turned out to have something to do with the Kouma War, if not the Shinma War, anyway. 

Val started loading his plate the moment it was set in front of him. Gaav, on the other hand, didn't take anything, although he did let the servants fill his mug with tea. We were using the "family" china—fine, gold-trimmed white porcelain sized for Phil's convenience—so the Chaos Dragon didn't look too ridiculous holding the drinking vessel. 

I took a bite of my toast, chewing and swallowing as quickly as I could without risking choking, and said, "I hope everyone will forgive me for moving this along, but we really do have to talk about what's next." I also nearly elbowed the servant bringing me a fresh cup of coffee, which showed how distracted I was. 

"Then we need to talk about the objectives of the Shard and its allies," Gaav rumbled. 

I blinked. "I don't see how talking about destroying the world will help." 

" _Short-term_ objectives, chimera, not that one. The Shard isn't fucking powerful enough to finish things on its own—Phibby was stronger than it is. So it needs to gather more power, and remove any obstacles. To get power, it needs to integrate with the other Shards." 

And we only knew where to find one of those. "Lei Magnus. We've already sent a message to Elder Milgazia at Dragon's Peak, but . . ." 

"If an entire fucking clan of dragons can't keep the lid on things for long enough to send us word, we probably don't stand much of a chance anyway. That's assuming your message gets there fast enough and the idiot golden listens to you, of course. If Xellos takes them by surprise . . . well, he does hold the speed record for turning golden dragons into piles of meat." Gaav shrugged. "Since no one we can afford to send there at this point is strong enough to be any fucking help, we don't have much choice about relying on them. Other than that, the Shard might try— _is_ probably trying—to find the other four parts of Ruby-Eye, but it has no more idea where to look than we do, or at least that was what the Shard Lei Magnus hosted told me, back in the day. Plus, it takes a Mazoku at pretty close range to confirm whether or not a human is housing a Shard, and they have to be looking for it. So there's nothing we can do about that unless you can think of a sane plan for having the entire population of the world brought within ten feet of me." 

Gaav snorted to emphasize just how ridiculous a concept he considered this, and Val said, "So we're into threats now?" while he served himself a new stack of pancakes. He was eating like Lina . . . well, okay, more like Amelia. No fighting over the food, and his table manners were decent, but he was making everything disappear fast. 

"Threats?" Phil asked, sounding as confused as I felt. 

"The other thing the Shard will be trying to do is eliminate anything that might stand in its way," Gaav resumed. "Not a long list—it takes a lot of power to damage a being that holds even five fucking percent of Ruby-Eye. The Dragon Gods, obviously, but they're never in any hurry to do anything—in fact, I'd bet they've spent the last twenty years in a staring contest with Dynast and the rest. Be nice if it made their eyeballs shrivel up and fall out." 

Damien giggled. I gave him a warning look, and he went quiet again. 

"Other than that, there's me, Val, Lina Inverse and her Giga Slave, and the Knight of Ceiphied. None of the other dead-dragon-god chunks floating around are strong enough to matter, and I'd bet your sorceress friend hasn't tried to teach that spell to anyone—she's crazy, but she never struck me as stupid. So that gives us two people to scoop up and bring here, since it'll be easier to keep an eye on everyone if we're all in the same place. Reduces the chance of sneak attacks taking someone out. I don't have any idea of where they are now, but I'd bet you do." 

Gaav turned his gaze to me. It felt cold and solid and _heavy_ , like he'd just dumped a monumental chunk of ice into my lap. I forced myself to meet it anyway, and saw a corner of his mouth twitch up. _Just dominance games,_ I told myself. The Chaos Dragon clearly kept himself in charge as much by force of personality as anything else—kind of like Lina, although I doubted either of them would have appreciated the comparison. 

"Luna Inverse is still the Knight of Ceiphied," I said. "She runs a cafe in Zefiria City. Lina and Gourry are in Taforashia, but . . ." 

"But?" Val prompted. 

"I don't know if she can cast the Giga Slave right now. I'll let her explain it if she wants to—I'd bet they're already on their way to Seyruun." And she was going to leave again immediately if she found out her sister was here, or would be coming here. Probably at high speed and without noticing any walls that might be in the way. 

"There's one other option for fighting the Shard," Val said. "Fusion magic. The way you took me out." 

I shook my head. "We don't know enough about it. Ame and I have tried to research it, but we can't make it work reliably without something to use as a channel, and the Dark Star Weapons are unavailable." 

We both glanced at Gaav, but the Dark Lord only shrugged. "It isn't exactly a usual Mazoku weapon either—getting someone who can channel Ceiphied's power to cooperate with one of us is pretty fucking difficult under normal circumstances—but I'll think about it. Val and I might be able to manage something. It might be more useful in the short term to get your friend to teach her spells to anyone who's able to learn them, though." 

I grimaced. "We might have a hard time finding anyone else who can cast even the Ragna Blade, much less the Giga Slave. Lina's magical capacity is ridiculously high—higher than mine, and the Giga Slave requires all of it." 

"High for a _human_ , you mean." Val had run out of food and was now leaning back in his chair. "So we need non-human allies. More dragons. Elves." 

"Or Mazoku," I suggested, looking at Gaav again . . . but the big man shook his head. 

"Even if I had any followers left, it's pretty fucking unlikely that any of them would be able to cast that spell. Especially if the target was Ruby-Eye." 

"That doesn't make any sense." Phil, who'd been quietly watching through all of this, nodded agreement with my statement. 

Val shrugged. "There are a bunch of restrictions on pure Mazoku when it comes to spellcasting. They'd probably apply to other astral beings as well, if there were any who were smart enough to cast anything in the first place." 

After thirty seconds of silence, I said, "One of you _could_ take the time to explain, you know. It might end up being important." 

"Thanks for reminding me why I hate this fucking cooperation-between-untrusted-equals stuff." Gaav turned his tea mug in his hands. It was a pretty good imitation of a man engaged in ordering his thoughts. "Mazoku don't often do much in the way of formal spellcasting. It isn't necessary—when the primary seat of your consciousness is on the astral, lashing out with astral force isn't much different than throwing a punch for a physical being. Most of the time, if you hear a Mazoku cast a 'spell' you don't recognize, it's just a mnemonic used to focus the powers of that particular individual for a more precise effect." 

It was weird hearing him talk that way, almost like a Guild instructor—with words of three and four syllables, none of them obscene. More proof that his crude warrior persona was mostly an act. 

"In terms of formal magic, most Mazoku more than a couple of hundred years old are at least competent shamanistic casters, and a lot of us learn white magic as well, since that's just holy magic techniques applied to the same forces as shamanism. Elemental spirits don't really have any will of their own, and they don't care who calls on them, so it's easy to shape their power. Holy and black magic are different, though, because they draw on beings that _do_ think. 

"Unlike mortals, who just gather up whatever stray whisps of energy have recently been thrown off by the beings they invoke, a Mazoku casting a black or holy spell opens an astral channel to its power source. In the case of holy spells, that's the dragon gods, and given that they're stronger than most Mazoku and really don't like us, that means the spell usually ends up killing the caster. Even I'd have a hard time surviving. 

"If it's black magic, you need to take three factors into account to figure out whether the spell will go through: familial relationship between the caster and power source, how they feel about each other, and their relative power levels. Trying to cast the spell of another Mazoku's name leads to the stronger of the two powers involved overwhelming the weaker, so the spell doesn't work and one of the two Mazoku involved dies. There's an exception to that, though— _if_ the caster is calling on a stronger Mazoku who's also the caster's . . . direct ancestor, I guess you'd say . . . and _if_ that Mazoku, plus any others in the intervening generations, is well-disposed toward the caster, the spell will not only work, it'll be about ten times as strong as it would be if cast by a non-Mazoku." 

"In other words, Xellos could cast Zelas Phalanx if the Greater Beast let him," Val said, "or the Dragon Slave if _both_ Zelas and Ruby-Eye agreed to let him, but trying to cast Dynast Brass would kill him. And any Mazoku who wants to cast one of the Lord of Nightmares' spells would have to go through Shabranigdo, since he's one of the links between Her and any other Mazoku." 

"That what you wanted to know, chimera?" Gaav finished, losing the slightly dry, lecturing tone. 

I blinked, sorting it through in my head. The short version seemed to be, _Mazoku can only safely cast black magic if they ask nicely and the other Mazoku who's acting as a power source lets them,_ but there was one thing that Gaav hadn't mentioned. "What about spells like Blast Ash or Necro Vood, that don't call on any Mazoku in particular?" 

"They effectively call on all Mazoku at once. I doubt Ruby-Eye himself would survive that, even if he managed to fucking pull the rest of himself together." 

"And, to get back to the point, all of _that_ means that, unless you're hiding someone somewhere, we've got exactly two people we know for sure can learn the Giga Slave," Val said, his mouth twisting oddly. "Me and Filia." 

Him and Filia? 

_Great Ceiphied, this is going to be a mess._

"So we need to get Lina and Luna here," I said. _And keep Lina from dying of fright and Luna from killing her, once they arrive._ "As quickly as possible." I looked pointedly at Gaav, then at Val. They were our trump cards in this, capable of teleportation (although I wasn't sure what Val's range was) and of long-distance flying. 

Gaav was frowning. "Neither of them's going to trust either of us, and the Knight of Ceiphied might attack me first and ask questions later—she used to have a reputation as a hardass, and I doubt she's mellowed all that much. Val isn't carrying much Mazoku energy around at the moment, so he'll have to go north without me." _Even though I don't like it,_ his expression clearly said. "As for Lina Inverse, do you have any way of finding her if she's already on the move? If I have to do it myself, it could take a while—scrying the astral for a human is fucking difficult, and I'm out of practice." 

"I should be able to track the Demon's Blood Talismans," I said. "I'm familiar with their astral signature, Protect spells tend to slide off them, and she never goes anywhere without them." _Especially not now._

"Fair enough," Gaav rumbled, but he still didn't look happy. "So you and I go to meet her, and Val goes to Zefiria with—" 

"Me," Ame said firmly, stepping into the room. "I'm not going to just sit around while others are in danger." 

I sighed. "Actually, I hope _no one's_ going to be in danger this time. But, well, it's up to Val, I guess." 

The young dragon—or could he be called young anymore?—gave all of us a long, thoughtful look, then nodded. "I'll be glad to have you, Princess." 

"Just Amelia, please. We are friends . . . aren't we?" 

"I'm reluctant to say that . . . Amelia. After all, there's no guarantee that we won't end up on opposite sides of a war at some point in the future. We're allies now, but my first loyalty will always be to my mate." Val looked at Gaav with . . . Well, really it was the same expression Gourry used to direct at Lina when he didn't think she was looking, except without the vagueness. 

Which meant that whatever was between these two might actually be as solid as they thought it was. 

"That doesn't mean we can't be friends," Amelia said firmly. "Zel and I consider Xellos-san a friend, and _he's_ on the other side this time for sure." 

_Speak for yourself,_ I thought . . . but I also smiled. _Trust Ame to make everything better._

"How are our other guests?" I asked my wife as she took her seat at the table and grimaced at a plateful of now-cold breakfast. A servant materialized as though by magic, removed her congealed eggs and tepid tea, and set a fresh cup and loaded plate in front of her. 

"Confused," she replied . . . and followed it up with a whole sausage. "And frightened. I put them in one of the guest suites that opens on the garden, so that they can let the dog out, and assigned them a maid. I tried to explain some stuff too, but I'm not sure how much of it got through to them. Plus, I couldn't tell them for sure that they were going to be safe here. If Xellos shows up, or . . . Taben . . ." 

"The Shard isn't likely to come in person," Gaav said. "Sending it would be risking everything for them, and even if it's fucking stupid, Xellos isn't. As for the slimy little cone himself, it's probably best if I set up a tripwire to alert me if any other Mazoku enters the palace." 

"You can't set up some kind of barrier to keep them out completely?" I asked. 

Gaav smirked. "Oh, I _could_ , but just how much of my power do you want hanging around this place? The tripwire should dissipate in a couple of months if I don't renew it. A full barrier strong enough to stop Xellos, with all the white magic interference this place throws up . . . you'd still be able to sense the residue from that a century from now. A Mazoku protective spell in the middle of the White Magic Capital, cast with the full cooperation of the king and his heir." 

I think Phil and Ame and I must all have been wearing the same distasteful grimace by the time the Chaos Dragon had finished talking. He was right: while having him protect the palace might solve our immediate problem, it would make us look like the worst kind of hypocrites and damage the political reputation of both the current royal family and Seyruun in general. We really couldn't afford that right now. 

My teeth were gritted. "Do the tripwire," I said through them. "It'll take me an hour or so to scry for Lina—will that be enough time?" 

"Should be." 

I nodded and pushed my chair back from the table. So did Gaav and Val, and, a moment later, Damien—well, he did have lessons he needed to attend. Phil stayed where he was, elbows planted on either side of his empty plate, frowning at nothing with his chin resting on his hands. Thinking. He'd gotten a lot quieter since King Eldoran had died. Even though he'd been managing the day-to-day business of the country for the last eight years of his father's life, he'd considered the old man a sort of fail-safe who could guide him back if he went too far off-track, and had become very cautious without him. 

Ame was still busy with her breakfast, but I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze on the way past, and she gave me a smile . . . while still chewing. Inwardly, I sighed—some things never changed. 

To my surprise, although Gaav vanished immediately, Val followed me out. "Uncle Zel?" 

"Yes?" 

"I need . . . Is there somewhere here that I can train, or am I going to have to go out into the hills?" 

"Solo, or against opponents?" If he wanted someone to fight, I wasn't sure who I would put up against him—there weren't a hell of a lot of people here who would be able to take on a dragon. 

"Solo," he said, to my relief. "No direct magic attacks, either. It's just that my reflexes are kind of messed up right now, and I need to work on straightening them out . . . or sooner or later, I'm going to have to stop to think in the middle of a fight when I don't have time for it." 

I nodded—I'd learned how that worked the hard way, as a raw twelve-year-old who had gotten overconfident in a fight against some bandits. I'd only survived because Rodimus had been there to pull my fat out of the fire. "There's a semi-private area Ame and I use . . . I can take you there." 

"Thanks." 

It was more semi- than private, really—the walls that marked off the edges were only about four feet high, but that was enough to keep people from wandering in by accident. It was a space roughly thirty feet square, with three big blocks of granite at the center of it. Although we'd wrapped them in protective spells, the stones were scarred from my sword blows and pocked by Amelia smashing into them with Visfan Rank. The ground had been covered with sand originally, but most of it had long since become rough, gritty glass, fused by an endless succession of Flare Arrows and Fireballs. 

"This should do," Val said. "Could you ask Princess Amelia to come out and join me when she's ready? And ask her to bring a map. I've never been to Zefiria, so I'm going to need some kind of directional aid." 

"I'll tell her," I said. Val was already propping his lance against the wall and eyeing the granite blocks, but he made an absent, one-handed gesture of acknowledgment. 

The last time I'd used any kind of scrying or dowsing spell had been when Damien was eight, to find a toy with a minor movement enchantment on it that he kept on losing under the furniture, so I was a bit surprised when everything went very smoothly indeed: I picked up the talismans immediately and was able to associate their location with a landmark, which in turn allowed me to mark a circle only a couple of miles in diameter on the map. I wasn't at all surprised to find that that location was much nearer to the northern border of Taforashia than the house Pokota had long ago arranged for Lina and Gourry. 

I rolled that map up, and then went through the other maps stored in the library until I found one of the north-east. I verified that Zefiria City was clearly marked before rolling up that map too and bundling them both under my arm. 

I sent a servant to ask Ame to meet me at the practice area, then headed back out there myself. I intended to hand the Zefiria map over to her and Val, and then go find Gaav. 

As I was climbing down the back stairs, I felt a faint vibration through the soles of my boots, like a mild earth tremour, or maybe a Dug Haut cast some distance away. I shook my head. _Guess we're going to have to remind the mage corps not to practice that kind of thing too close to the buildings. Again._

I stepped out into the sunlight, and blinked, because at some point while I'd been working with the maps and scrying spells, the semi-private practice area had acquired an audience. It seemed like half the palace guard was clustered around the walls, watching what was going on inside. 

I shouldered my way forward to the wall, displacing three people in the process. One of them seemed about to curse at me until he noticed who I was, at which point he muttered an apology and stepped back to allow me through. 

On the other side of the wall, there were now one-and-a-half granite blocks where there had originally been three. The third had been reduced to a messy cairn of jagged-edged rocks, and the central one had several good-sized chunks missing from it. As I watched, Val popped into view near the ragged central monolith, delivered four quick sequential strikes which removed a near-perfect rectangular chunk of it, and then disappeared again, only to reappear above it and slam his foot down in a kick that almost split the stone in half. 

I whistled softly. Granted, dragons were strong, but I'd never seen anything quite like this. As far as I could tell, Val wasn't using any magic except teleportation, and despite the protection spells on the rocks, he was disassembling them with his bare hands. Well, hands, feet, knees, and elbows. I wasn't an expert on unarmed combat, but his style was definitely more elaborate than the one Phil and Ame used, favouring knife-hand strikes over punches, and complex combinations over single, devastating attack techniques. _Nasty._ And I doubted it was anything he'd learned in the local militia back in Sandy Point. No, these were Valgaav's skills. 

Another strike made the ragged stone block come apart in four pieces, and Val moved on to the rightmost granite monolith, which had been untouched until now. Suddenly, he vanished altogether, only to reappear a second later dropping head-first from the sky with one arm extended. 

The heel of his hand slammed into the stone, and it _rippled_ , shivered, and dissolved into a pile of dust. Val flickered out again and reappeared right-side-up, landing neatly on the ground from a few inches up with a slight, springy flex of his ankles and knees. Several of the off-duty guards who had been watching him applauded. Val gave them a cold look. He raised his hand, and the black-shafted lance he'd brought back with him from Kalmaart flew toward him and slapped against his palm. 

I used a touch of Levitation to vault over the wall and went to meet him. 

"Amelia should be on her way. Here's your map." 

I held out the scroll, and he accepted it silently, frowning. 

"You don't look very happy," I said. 

"I've cut down the delay, but I'm still too damned slow. It might not matter if I were expecting to fight humans or other dragons, but against Mazoku . . ." Val grimaced. "And my astral senses don't work quite the same way they used to, either, although they're sharper than they were a week ago. Still, if I don't get my act together soon, Xellos might be able to take me out without my ever managing to see him coming." 

"You looked pretty impressive to me. As I think your victims would agree." I nudged a chunk of rock with my foot, just for emphasis. 

"And when have you ever fought a high-level Mazoku who wasn't either playing with you or at least somewhat distracted?" came the caustic response. "Real Mazoku combat takes place on both the physical and the astral simultaneously. The same attack can switch from one side to the other several times before reaching the target. And it all happens incredibly fast." 

"You almost sound like you'd prefer to be Valgaav again." Once it slipped out, there was no taking it back, so I let it sit there in an ugly lump. 

"Under the circumstances? It would give us a better chance of succeeding against the Shard . . . but I like being able to transform fully into a dragon, even though I don't have the first clue of how to fight in that form, and as Valgaav I didn't have that ability. Although he's already said he won't do it again unless he can figure out what went wrong the first time, so it's a moot point right now." 

"Gaav?" I said after a moment, disentangling the pronouns. 

Val nodded, a rueful smile creasing his lips. "He can get protective at the oddest times." 

"And that's the only thing stopping you? You're not bothered by the idea of being turned into a chimera?" 

"Uncle Zel, I'm _already_ a freak: last ancient dragon anywhere in the world, remember? It doesn't matter that there were others like me once, because there aren't any now and won't be ever again. Even if I'd survived the last massacre completely unscathed and the entire clan of goldens who followed Vrabazard had fallen over dead the next day from the grey wing-rot, I wouldn't have had many good options available to me: spend the rest of my life hiding among humans, try to find a clan of whites or dimos that would take me in out of pity, become a hermit . . . As a human, your situation was completely different." 

_He can see straight through me._ Uncomfortable thought. 

"Zel! Val-kun!" 

"Amelia," I said, relieved as my wife's voice broke into the awkward moment. Val unrolled the map and began to study it as she vaulted the wall, the crowd of off-duty guards on the far side having mostly dispersed. 

"My range for bending space is limited to a couple of hundred miles," the dragon observed, "so we're going to have to make at least two hops. More would be safer, since I don't know the slope of the land. Hmph." 

"The slope makes a difference?" Ame asked as she joined us. She wore a variation of her old traveling outfit, a white shirt and cape with blue trousers, tailored in such a way as to give her freedom of movement for fighting. She still wore one of her old wristbands, on the left—not because she had any real need for the weak protective spells on it, but its astral signature was so familiar to me that if something went wrong and I had to scry for her, it would act like a beacon . . . just like the one currently stuffed into my pocket. 

Val raised his eyebrows. "I've only appeared inside solid rock once, by accident. It wasn't pleasant. The astral teleportation used by true Mazoku is supposed to be safer, since you can check your arrival point before emerging, but you can't take anything physical along if you're doing that, so I never had access to it." 

"Oh," Ame said. "I'll leave the navigating to you, then, Val-kun." _Is this really going to be all right?_ her sidelong glance at me said. I nodded once—after all, Val had succeeded in teleporting four people into the confined space of an inn room, even without access to most of his memory, and they were headed for the wide-open countryside. 

Val re-rolled the map. "Amelia-san, if you could cast a Ray Wing around both of us, it would make things easier. Uncle Zel, we'll see you in a few hours." 

I nodded and took several steps back as Ame quickly subvocalized the Chaos Words. 

" _Ray Wing!_ " 

A bubble appeared around the two of them in the instant before they, and it, vanished. 

"Time we got moving too, chimera." 

I flinched and turned to find Gaav smirking at me. He seemed to have hidden himself on the astral somehow, so I hadn't sensed him until he'd spoken. I just wished I hadn't given him the satisfaction of reacting to what he was doing. 

"Fine," was all I said. I unrolled the map. "Lina's somewhere in here, or she was fifteen minutes ago." 

"Probably headed north along the trade road," the Mazoku said. 

The world flickered, and we were standing at the top of a grassy hill somewhere between Seyruun and Taforashia. Just like that. It even had a good view of the road, and of the hay wagon being drawn along it by a pair of mules. Two familiar figures were sprawled over the hay. 

I half-ran, half-skidded down the hill. "Lina! Gourry!" 

"Ah! Monster!" The farmer driving the cart flicked his reins against the mules' backs, but the mules didn't seem interested in moving any faster. 

_Oh, hell._ You would have thought that the incident with Taben's sister earlier that morning would have been enough of the reminder, but I hadn't travelled outside of Seyruun without a diplomatic entourage in years. Concealment wasn't as reflexive for me as it had once been, and while I did wear long sleeves and fingerless gloves so as not to have to look at the rocks sticking out of my hands, my head and face were bare. 

"Zel! Oh, it's alright, mister, he won't hurt anyone," Lina said airily as she sat up and flicked hay out of her hair. Then she stiffened. "The guy at the top of the hill, on the other hand . . ." 

"Is on our side for now," I said. _And probably laughing his head off at us, the bastard._

Lina was shaking Gourry by the shoulder. "Hey, jellyfish brains, wake up!" 

The swordsman snuffled half a snore and blinked blue eyes open. "Ugh . . . ish . . . breakfast . . . ?" 

"No, we've got company—the good kind. I think," Lina added, with a sidelong glance up the hill at Gaav. The Dark Lord didn't seem in any hurry to move, though—he was just standing there watching us with his hands stuffed in his pockets. "Mister, we'll be getting off now. It isn't fair to Zel to make him jog along after us." 

"Thanks," I muttered sourly. 

The mules slowed to a stop, and Lina and Gourry slid from the cart. I took the opportunity to have a good look at them. 

Gourry hadn't changed much in the past twenty years. There was a little silver gilding his hair, and he had faint crow's feet at the corners of his eyes to match the laugh lines that were starting to appear around his mouth, but his physique had improved, if anything—life as a swordsmith seemed to agree with him. And his old armour clearly still fit, because he was wearing it. 

Lina . . . had changed a bit more. She still wore her talismans, shoulder guards, and a black headband, but the rest of her ensemble had changed out of necessity. 

"Do you know yet whether it's going to be a boy or a girl?" I asked. 

"A girl," Lina said, cupping her hands over the bulge at her waistline. "From the look of it, she's got the typical Inverse timing, but we didn't want to wait much longer. Actually, even though I hate not being able to cast spells, if I'd known it would have such a positive effect here—" She touched her chest. "—I might have done it a little earlier." 

"Oh, I don't know, I liked the small ones too," Gourry said. 

Lina stepped on his foot. Gourry barely even seemed to notice. Then again, he'd probably said it on purpose. 

The blonde swordsman wasn't quite as dumb as he looked, and I'd learned more than I'd _ever_ wanted to know about the two of them the night I'd barged into their inn room in hot pursuit of a thief and found Gourry naked and tied to the bed, and Lina . . . Well, actually, I couldn't remember exactly what Lina had been doing. My memory had mercifully blanked it out. Or maybe that had been the fireball that had hit me three seconds later. 

"So why did you come all the way out here to meet us?" Lina continued as though Gourry had never spoken. "We'd have gotten to Seyruun in about a week—" 

"The situation's changed," I said grimly, and started to explain. To give Lina credit, she didn't blanch until the name _Luna Inverse_ came up, towards the end. 

"Sis is going to be—" 

"Relax, Lina," Gourry said. "I'll protect you." 

The sorceress's expression softened as she looked up at him. "I'm not sure whether that's reassuring or scary. I'd really prefer _not_ to have you turned into a toad, you know." 

"We didn't have much choice about involving her," I said. "This isn't like what happened with Rezo—the Shard inside Taben has the support of other Mazoku, and it seems to be smarter than the other one." 

"And I'm not of much use right now anyway," Lina said ruefully, rubbing her baby bump again. "Kiddo, you really do have some timing." 

Pregnancy for a sorceress had effects similar to menstruation . . . except longer-lasting and with worse consequences if she somehow forced herself to cast spells anyway. 

With the help of her talismans, Lina might be able to manage a Fireball or so worth of power, but if she went too far, she would lose the baby. And there wouldn't be any warning of where the line was. She wouldn't know until the miscarriage was underway. 

The Giga Slave, or even the Ragna Blade, was obviously out of the question for a few months. 

"If you three are done with your reunion, then we need to get going. Or I'm leaving without you." Gaav appeared suddenly about three feet from us, scowling. I didn't flinch this time—Xellos did the abrupt-casual-teleportation thing too, and I was regaining my ability to put up with it. Lina didn't jump either, but then Gaav was neither her sister nor a slug. 

Gourry, on the other hand, grabbed his sword from the scabbard and placed himself between the Dark Lord and his wife. "I don't remember who you are," he said, "but I know we've fought before, and I'm not going to—" 

Lina grabbed her husband's arm at the same moment as Gaav said, "You couldn't beat me with Gorun Nova and yet you're going to try it with _that_ fucking toy? Either way, I don't have time for you right now." 

What had him in such a hurry all of a sudden? The chances of the Shard having either found one of its missing brothers or gotten at Lei Magnus in the last half an hour were infinitesimally small, but the only other thing I could think of that might have gotten Gaav in such a state was . . . _oh, hell, no—_

"Something's happened to Val, hasn't it?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say? There's no way Gourry would be able to put up with Lina if he didn't have an M streak.


	27. Val

The final teleport left us floating around thirty feet above a pasture. Several cows raised their heads, gave us disinterested glances, and returned to their lunch. 

"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered. Below and to our right was the first cobblestone street of a city that had outgrown its original protective wall, but the rest of the area was . . . cows. 

"Lina-san always did say it was right at the edge of town," Princess Amelia said. "I'll put us down on the road. It has to be one of the buildings with the signs, right?" 

"Probably the one that says 'Cornucopia Cafe'." 

"You can read them from all the way up here? I didn't know you had such good eyes!" 

"Flying's a lot easier when you can spot things on the ground from a good distance up," I pointed out. Amelia blinked several times and seemed to belatedly remember I was a dragon. "Put us down in the middle of the road. We should at least be able to avoid the cowshit that way, and there's no one else watching." 

"Filia-san would be disgusted at you if she caught you using such language," Amelia said as we flew over the cows and the fence and dropped down onto the road. 

"Filia-san has spent the majority of her life being rather sheltered. And consider who I work for. Gaav doesn't moderate his language for anyone, including Ruby-Eye himself." I smirked. 

"You really do love him, don't you?" 

"Yes, I do. And if you think that's odd, just accept that I find his dragon form extremely attractive and leave it at that." 

Amelia smiled, a bit ruefully. "It isn't just to judge people just on their looks, and you and he have known each other for hundreds of years . . . but I do have to admit that I wondered. Gaav doesn't strike me as a lovable person." 

"He's . . . complicated," I said. "And you've been enemies. There are facets of his personality I doubt he'll ever let you see." 

The Princess shook her head. "I still don't know if he's good or bad for you—maybe both at once—but I'm not going to try to come between you. I don't have the right, and . . . I know how it feels when someone else sets out to deny you your love." 

"Good," I said. "Because I _will_ fight to the death to keep him." 

"I think we all know that now." 

The Cornucopia Cafe had a "Closed" sign showing in the front window, but the door wasn't locked. Amelia knocked, then opened it and stuck her head in. 

"Hello?" 

A sound of dishes breaking came from somewhere nearer the rear of the building. 

"We're closed!" A male voice. "Come back later!" 

"Spot? Are you breaking the china again?" And a female. 

"Excuse me," Amelia called. "We're looking for Luna Inverse-san. It's very important—and very urgent!" 

"I told you—come back later!" the male voice said. Then there was a canine yelp and the sound of something else breaking. 

"Spot, I swear, you're hopeless . . ." 

"I'm sorry, Luna-sama! I'll clean it up right away!" 

So Luna Inverse _was_ here. 

"I'm sorry," Amelia called, "but this might be a matter of life and death." 

"And if you make us wait until you're open," I added, "we'll just end up saying all the same things to you, except less politely, because we'll be pissed off beyond belief. Did I mention that we're here on behalf of the King of Seyruun?" I didn't expect to be able to make Luna curious, but if I could at least get it through her head that we weren't going to give up just because she decided to act like a pain in the ass . . . 

"Come inside and wait," the woman's voice replied at last. "I'll be with you in a moment." 

Rummaging sounds, and what I thought might have been someone being hit over the head with a broom. Amelia opened the door the rest of the way, and we stepped inside the Cornucopia Cafe, blinking in the dimness, since the windows were still shuttered. Tables with their chairs inverted on top of them lurked to either side, looming out of the gloom like a species of bizarre sea creature. 

I didn't like it very much, so I said "Lighting!" crisply and sent a glowing ball up toward the ceiling to dissipate the shadows. Properly lit, the cafe struck me as the kind of place that Filia would have liked: well-kept and clean, with surprisingly elegant decor. Not a place where I really felt at home, although it didn't seem to bother Amelia. In fact, she looked like she fit right in as she moved curiously through the room. 

"Luna-san must have invested quite a bit of money in this place," she said as she examined a painting hanging on the wall. "This is all fine craftsmanship." 

"You have a discerning eye," said a voice from the back of the room. A moment later, a woman stepped out from behind the "Employees Only" swinging door at the back. 

Subconsciously, I'd expected her to look more like her red-headed firebrand of a sister . . . but really, if there was any resemblance, I couldn't see it. Luna Inverse, if this was she, had deep purple hair cut so that the bangs covered her eyes. She was also much taller than Lina, had a generous chest measurement, and wore a many-pocketed apron over a knee-length skirt and a lace-trimmed blouse. It wasn't a very sorceress-like outfit at all. 

Her astral presence felt . . . _wrong_ was the only word I could find after several moments of groping. There was something large and looming there, bigger than my own astral self, but without the unimaginable weight of Gaav's, and it didn't move properly with her. Instead, when she made a movement, it jerked into motion after a half-second's delay, as though tied to her by too long a string. Even worse, bits of it seemed to fade in and out randomly. It made it difficult to get much sense of the whole. And at the center of this mess there was a normal human astral body that looked like it was swimming inside the larger one, struggling to get out. 

"Dragon, I don't know what that filthy thing on your back is, but you're going to take it outside right now." 

It took me a moment to realize that she was referring to Khirr and the Mazoku power that my lance contained. When I did, I gave her a cold look and a sneer. "I'm not disarming myself. And the less time you spend fussing about it, the more quickly we'll be gone." 

Luna Inverse glared at me, her eyes showing as glints of light under her bangs, and tried to lean on me on the astral side. She jerked in surprise when I just leaned right back, and threw in a couple of techniques Gaav had taught me for use on lesser Mazoku. _You don't have any idea of how to deal with opposition, do you?_

"Who are you?" the Knight of Ceiphied said after a moment, in a decidedly chilly tone. 

"A hired escort," I said evenly. "She's the one you want to talk to." I gestured in Amelia's direction. 

"Are you always this rude?" 

I turned my sneer to a lazy smirk. "When it suits me. The Mazoku don't care, you know, and I don't have to deal with humans all that often." 

"Val-san," Amelia said, reprovingly. 

"And you are?" Luna said, at last turning her attention to the other woman. 

"Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, Crown Princess of the Seyruun kingdom." Amelia bowed as she introduced herself, probably because trying to curtsey in trousers looks ridiculous. She also produced a badge enamelled with the Seyruun crest and held it out to Luna, who took her time examining it. 

"You're also my sister's occasional travelling companion, if I'm not mistaken." 

"That was a while ago. Although I doubt I'll ever forget it." Amelia smiled. "But really, we came here to warn you." 

"Warn _me_? About what?" 

While Amelia described the current situation, I wandered restlessly around the room. Something wasn't quite right . . . and yet, I couldn't seem to pinpoint the problem. It wasn't anything so simple or obvious as Luna's distorted astral body, although having that presence so close by made it difficult for me to concentrate. There was something else abroad out there that was causing my hackles to rise. 

Even alerted and with my senses stretched to the limit, though, I wasn't quite quick enough to stop them. I might have had trouble even as Valgaav. 

The pocket dimension snapped suddenly into being around us like the jaws of a bear trap, extinguishing my Lighting spell, at the same moment as balls of energy shot at me from the left. I dodged, spinning, and pulled Khirr from my back, then looked for the others. 

I found Luna Inverse first, standing in the open with a large kitchen knife in her hands. The blade of the improvised weapon gleamed with sourceless frosty light. 

Amelia had very sensibly gone to ground beneath a table, but with only the light naturally present in this dimension, I couldn't get a good enough look to see what she was doing. 

The place where we found ourselves was a perfect image of the cafe. _Simple dimensional splitting. So this isn't a proper pocket, just a figment._ Even a weak Mazoku could create one, but it was actually more difficult to break out of than a true pocket. Its disadvantage, of course, was the lack of environmental hazards that didn't exist in the real world. 

If you wanted to kill someone you'd pulled into a figment, you usually had to do it yourself. 

Something shot at me out of the astral, and I channeled my power into Khirr and brought the lance up to block. _Szing-szing-szing!_ Three quick blows in succession. They looked like tentacle strikes, but whatever Mazoku was responsible for them didn't seem interested in coming out of the astral. Since its tentacles appeared to have special properties when it came to breaking through the dimensional walls, it didn't exactly need to, either. 

Well, when in doubt, taunt. Mazoku all had a high opinion of themselves, and few responded well to insult. 

"So this is the best you can do?" I said. "Take pot-shots at us from hiding? That's all of your attack plan?" 

Again, my astral senses warned me of the attack. This time, I blocked it without shifting my feet or changing my expression. 

"Do you expect us to expose ourselves to the Chaos Dragon's vengeance for killing his pet?" said a voice out of nowhere. 

"Actually, I expect you to fail," I said with a smirk. "Which would make Gaav's vengeance a moot point. I was his General in all but name—do you really think I'd fall to a couple of little pissants who don't even dare show their faces?" 

"Die, dragon!" 

Well, that had gone nowhere. I sighed and shook my head, dodging further tentacles as they phased out of the astral, then jumping to avoid a barrage of energy globes that came at me from behind. Hadn't they figured out yet that that wasn't going to work? And it was a "they". At least two of them, with different taste in attacks. 

I clawed my hair out of my eyes. Shit, that was going to be a pain. As Valgaav, I'd cut it off initially because it had been a tangled mess, matted with blood and sand, but I'd never let it regrow because I'd been afraid it would get in the way. Too bad I'd been right. 

_Enough games._ The next time a tentacle shot out in front of me, instead of dodging or parrying, I grabbed it and hauled. 

The thing I yanked out of the astral side could have been loosely described as humanoid. Loosely. One head, balanced on top of an upright torso, with limbs below and down the sides. That the limbs consisted of thirty or so black tentacles was . . . a comparatively minor violation, as these things went. The face, other than being grey, was almost perfectly human, with wide blue eyes, a snubbed nose, and a narrow mouth. Androgynous, though, like the one voice we'd heard so far. Maybe it was one of those Mazoku that thought that if neuter was good enough for Ruby-Eye, it was good enough for anyone. 

I slammed it to the floor and sliced most of the tentacles off with two quick motions of my lance. The ominous black power crackling around Khirr's blades affected the astral as well as the physical, so there wouldn't be any problems with things growing back. Then I whacked off its head and divided the torso into three parts. It was still twitching afterwards, so it was likely one of the Mazoku that could recover from even that level of destruction, but it would take days to pull itself back together. Which meant that I didn't need to waste any more time on it. 

So that was one, and two was . . . two was . . . I had to focus pretty hard on the astral to find it, and when I did . . . 

"Amelia! Move, _now_!" 

Fortunately, the princess did have some battle skills, even if they were rusty. At the sound of my voice, she rolled out from under her current table and took refuge under a different one just as the section of floor she'd been crouching on exploded upward, turning the table above it to kindling and sending chunks of chair flying around the room. 

Luna Inverse still wasn't moving. No, that wasn't quite true—she was glancing around the room quickly in a way that suggested she couldn't orient herself properly among the layers of reality present. Keeping alert, I walked up to her and slapped her, angling my lance to block her knife-hand on the upswing. 

"Got your attention now?" I growled. "The motion of the figment against the background is cyclical. Ignore the astral-double-vision effect and watch for things moving in the _opposite_ direction. And protect Amelia, because she's working blind. If anything happens to her, I'm holding you responsible, and you really won't like that." 

"You—" 

"I was trained for this," I interrupted. "You clearly weren't. I don't care how much power you have—if you don't know how to use it, I need you to stay out of the way— _shit!_ " There was a flicker of physical motion, a humanoid form appearing for a split second, and I shoved Luna toward Amelia and threw as much power as I could into a shield, channelling my magic in the Mazoku way because there was no time for anything else. Needles of black energy hit my protection and evaporated into little whisps of darkness that mixed with the general gloom. I just hoped they weren't poisonous. Luna's physical body didn't seem to have been hit, although the edge of her extended astral self hadn't been so lucky. I wasn't going to worry about it for now, though, because the smaller human form inside it hadn't been touched. 

I wasn't sure whether there was one more Mazoku, or two. I could only put my finger on one, but instinct told me that the glimpses I kept getting out of the corner of my eye of something that moved almost but not _quite_ with the general ambient represented danger. And I was less worried about the enemy I could see than I was about the one I couldn't. 

Getting rid of the one I could see would be quicker, though. Marginally quicker. Much quicker if I could have gotten it to manifest physically, but it seemed that it wanted to be stubborn. 

Ragud Mezegis had been able to cut through the dimensional barrier separating the physical from the astral and attack things that existed only on the other side. Khirr hadn't manifested any such ability so far, but maybe it just needed a boost. 

"Dwelling within the eternal and the infinite, source of all souls, everlasting flame of blue . . ." I'd never cast this except for practice, several hundred years ago, but I could feel my power being drawn into the Chaos Words, and as I forced the growing spell into Khirr, I was gratified to see the lance's crackling black blades flare more strongly and become threaded with blue-white. "Let the power hidden in my soul be drawn forth from the infinite! _Ra Tilt!_ " 

The power hidden in a dragon's soul was much larger than anything a human would ever be able to muster, and I focused it all into Khirr and on piercing through a point on the astral as I lunged forward. I felt the lance bite into the dimensional wall and break through into the space beyond, providing a little glimpse of the confusion on the far side—physical vision doesn't do a good job of making sense of the astral. 

Khirr struck resistance again, and I jammed it a little further forward and snapped, " _Break!_ " 

The Ra Tilt exploded into a maelstrom of astral energy, and I felt something scream and die, over there on that side. Two Mazoku down, and I didn't even know what this one had really looked like. 

There was a ripple around us as the figment fell apart, but I knew we still weren't safe. Without the figment's interference, I should have been able to find the third Mazoku, but it must have frozen, hiding motionless against the convolutions of the astral. And I really wasn't happy with what had just happened, either. It had been too easy. As though the second Mazoku had been offering itself as a sacrifice to draw my attention away from . . . something. 

The third might be an observer . . . but all this as a test of my battle capability? Or maybe of Luna's? That seemed too simple. Like too much work to go through. It might be one layer, though. Xellos did like layers and convolutions and hidden tricks. A test, an attempt to kill, an attempt to kidnap . . . No, even all of that together wasn't enough . . . 

The maybe-there, maybe-not pulse stayed exactly where it was on the astral. What the hell was it doing? Should I try to kill it? 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the kitchen knife fall from Luna Inverse's hand as it spasmed. Her head snapped back, and she screamed, muscles spasming, her flesh writhing underneath her blouse. _What the . . . ?_

"Amelia-san, try to figure out what's—" I stopped in mid sentence as I turned to face the two women, because once my astral senses were focused on them, the problem became obvious. 

I'd half-forgotten the black needles that had pocked the fading lump of Ceiphied's power that Luna bore with her, but each tiny needle-prick had now expanded into a sizzling black sore, the astral flesh around it writhing with pain and trying to withdraw. It seemed that Ceiphied had been more dragon-like than I'd realized, because his power was fighting to squirt itself through to the physical using the only medium available: Luna Inverse. But her body was human, without a dragon's astral transfer loci, and the energy was just disrupting her flesh. And the black was eating inward. _Shit!_

I put Khirr away and reached out on the astral, trying to grab onto what was left of Ceiphied and pin it so that it stayed on its own side, but it wriggled and squirmed and I couldn't manipulate my astral body all that well with my physical one interfering. Luna was making horrible keening sounds, like a hatchling bleeding to death, and Amelia seemed to be casting every curative spell that popped into her head— _Recovery! Dicleary! Flow Break!_ —to no visible effect. 

"Amelia-san," I said grimly, "if someone's limb is being attacked by a slow-spreading fatal poison transmitted through the bone, and you have no antidote for the poison itself, what is the recommended treatment?" 

"Amputation," was Amelia's instant reply. "But . . ." 

"That's what I thought. There's only one way, then. Guard me as best you can—if I don't do this _now_ , she might die." 

I sat down on the floor with my back to a table leg, and turned my attention to the astral. _A door which is not a door, because the entrance is everywhere and in everything, and we always stand on the threshold . . ._ If I wasn't trying to stand or move on the physical side, it became much easier to manipulate the "me" that was purely focused spirit energy. My astral body was always in dragon form, which meant that when my physical body was human-shaped, the cognitive dissonance was extreme. 

_It's mostly this part,_ I thought. Part of a limb and what might have been a wing, if it hadn't been sagging and vague and changing shape and covered with sizzling black sores. If there was bone in there, or any equivalent, my claws weren't going to be strong enough to carry this off, using Khirr would have meant taking part of my attention off the astral, and my breath weapon might cause unexpected side effects, which left only one way. 

I pinned the vague, squirming, struggling mass with my body, spread my jaws with a grimace of distaste, and bit down on the clean portion of astral flesh closest to the sizzling sores. I clenched my jaws tight—breaking bone requires a lot of pressure. Then I jerked as I felt the astral flesh dissolve inside my mouth. 

It tasted like blood and honey and something right on the edge of rotting. When I yanked my head to the side, it stretched like glowing taffy before it finally broke. Scraping my talons along my jaw didn't dislodge it—instead, the damned stuff clung to me elastically and began to soak in through my skin. 

_Shit._ It wasn't agonizingly painful the way Gaav's power had been before I'd learned to assimilate it, just warm and a little tingly. Insidious. And since the damage had already been done, I should be concentrating on what I'd set out to do here. Before the sores of Mazoku energy tried to melt into me too. Even though I knew how to deal with that kind of power, it was going to hurt. 

I selected another part of pseudo-Ceiphied, bit, and pulled. More contaminated astral flesh left its original owner and stuck to me instead. I ignored it. 

The third and fourth bites were shallower, more an exercise in tearing off strips than amputations, lifting off superficial sores. _Can't swallow . . . don't want it to get too far inside . . ._ Feeling awkward, bloated, and pulled off-balance by the bits of dead god sticking to my skin, I staggered away from Luna and pulled myself into a deeper convolution of the astral. 

A little experimentation demonstrated that I could burn the sores away, although it took a lot more power than it should have. And I was dizzy and starting to see double. Ceiphied's power was compatible with mine, but that just meant it was assimilating a bit too easily. Definitely bloated, and I was being force-fed even more because I couldn't get _rid_ of the stuff . . . Becoming Mazoku had been easier. 

It was inevitable that I wouldn't get to all of the black sores in time. What I didn't expect was that the pain when the first one touched me would be so intense it forced my consciousness out of the astral and back into the physical, where I sat on the floor of the cafe with my knees hugged to my chest, trying to ride the waves of agony. It felt like two incompatible powers were at war inside me—two _deliberately_ incompatible powers, I realized. The black needles had been _designed_ to disrupt Ceiphied's power. 

It had all been a subtle and insidious trap. 

I snarled at nothing and forced my consciousness back to the astral. Attacking the Knight of Ceiphied with this shit was one thing, but the bubbling agony wasn't much worse than what I remembered fighting while curled in a little ball in a cave, with barely enough energy to spare to listen to Gravos and Jillas' reports. And I wasn't alone this time. I could feel it—feel _him_ , at the other end of a thread unspooling into the infinite distance. _Gaav._ And because of that, I couldn't— _wouldn't_ —give up. 

Force the agony toward the tip of my tail. I could live without a tail-tip until it grew back, and my own astral flesh wouldn't stick to me the way the Ceiphied chunks had, so it would be a clean amputation. 

But that would be the last thing I did, because I didn't want to have to bite off my tail in sections if another one got to me. I should be able to do it once, but I doubted I would be able to nerve myself up for it a second time. For now, I needed to burn away the other sores before they could touch me. 

One, two, three four five . . . I was almost seeing _triple_ now, and the sores were getting larger and joining together, but I had to hold on . . . 

When the second one hit, something like a whimper escaped me before I could bite down on my tongue and silence myself. Push it toward my tail . . . tail . . . _Ugh!_ Third one, and I could taste blood. Send that one to my tail too, although I was starting to think I was going to have to bite it off just south of my rump to get rid of all this shit . . . There would not be a fourth. I told myself that, because it was the only way to keep from going insane. 

"Val!" 

And now I was hearing voices . . . No. Smell of musk and metal, teeth closing gently over the back of my neck on the astral as arms wrapped around me on the physical. _Gaav._ He was here. 

Big talons combed through the part of Ceiphied's remains that I still hadn't assimilated, and burned the blackness away with clean red fire. Then they dug into my tail, forcing out the alien power and cauterizing the wounds to make certain they were clean. That hurt, but it hurt a lot less than the invasion of the unwanted black. 

When he was done, he unfurled a huge wing across my back, warming me. I still felt dizzy and bleary and stuffed too full, but the pain was gone, and I sighed and let myself fall back to the physical. 

He was kneeling on the floor of the cafe, holding me, and I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face against his shoulder for a few precious moments, ignoring the other people—more than two now—staring at us. 

What mattered to me right now was him and I.


	28. Gaav

_Are you all right?_ I wanted so badly to ask, but couldn't bring myself to do it in front of the fucking Knight of Ceiphied. Bad enough that I couldn't let go of him. 

"What happened?" Trust the chimera to keep his priorities straight. 

The princess shook her head. "I saw all of it, but I have no idea what was going on." 

Val raised his head and smirked, although on the astral he still looked like he was on the verge of passing out. "I accidentally ate something that disagreed with me, you could say. Now that I've gotten rid of the poison, I just have the mother of all cases of astral indigestion. And I'm sorry I frightened you," he added in the merest breath of a whisper. 

"Next time you develop a taste for dead dragon god, try _not_ to season it with little bits of Dynast," I growled. "Any other dragon would have died before I got here. As things stood, you were at risk of being taken over. Don't _ever_ try that again." 

"I had a choice between doing something stupid and watching the Knight of Ceiphied get torn apart as her astral energies turned on her. It was the correct strategic decision, and you know it." 

What could I say to that? He was right. We both knew he was right. A part of me was still terrified and enraged and looking for an outlet, but there was no _time_ for that right now. The moment we had some privacy, though, I was going to fuck him until he couldn't walk straight. It was that or pound him senseless with my fists. 

Suddenly, Val stiffened. "Shit!" he said, and belched, almost frying my ear. 

An ancient dragon's natural breath weapon is called Moonshadow Breath. It's ten times as powerful on the astral as it is on the physical, but that doesn't mean it has _no_ physical force. Val's involuntary discharge blew out half a wall. 

"I think we'd better take you outside," I said. "Think you can walk?" 

"As long as I don't have to balance or navigate," he said. 

I helped him to his feet and put one arm around him. He leaned on me with his eyes shut and let me guide him out the door. 

"I think the worst part is that I can't throw it up," he said as he slid down into a sitting position against one of the intact walls of the cafe. "Ugh." 

"On the bright side, your power's almost doubled," I said, sitting down beside him. "Once you've . . . finished digesting, I think you'll be back up to your old level, or close to it." 

"Assuming that I ever find the time to train my reflexes properly," came the muttered reply. 

"We'll make the time," I said. "I agree that it's too risky to act half-assed about it any longer. We need you in full form." 

Val grimaced. "I've run into eight enemy Mazoku today already, one of them a Priest. And it's not even noon yet. 'S fucking ridiculous." 

"There were three here, then?" 

"I think so. I killed two. The third might still be hanging around—I was never quite sure it was there. It might have been intended as an observer only. Oh, and one of the ones I killed belonged to the Greater Beast." 

Zelas and Dynast . . . well, I'd suspected all along that they were both involved. 

"You two look comfortable." Luna Inverse had emerged from the cafe, and was standing on the porch outside. Behind her were her sister, Lina's various traveling companions, and a nervous-looking middle-aged greenish werewolf. To be exact, Lina was hiding behind the chimera and her pet swordsman and looking like she wanted to be anywhere but where she was. 

"Not really," Val said. "I don't know how you stand it." 

Luna blinked. "Stand what?" 

"Dragging a cottage-sized lump of half-rotten dragon god around with you on the astral. Just touching it was bad enough. I won't even get into what it tasted like." 

"I think my brain just broke," Lina muttered. 

"Val, no offense, but I think you'd better explain what happened properly, instead of in random bits," the chimera said. 

My dragon sighed. "All right, all right. We'd just gotten here, and Amelia-san was trying to explain the situation to Luna-san, when at least two Mazoku showed up . . ." 

Val knew how to give a report—I'd taught him, after all. The attack he described did sound an awful lot like something Zelas (or the slimy little cone) might have come up with. Luna Inverse shuddered as he explained his "first-aid measures", as he called them. At least his astral body seemed to be settling down now, with fewer shivers of discomfort running through him. From the feel of it, he'd grown at least ten feet from nose to tail-tip on that side, and put on a good ton of hard muscle. If it had been physical growth, it would have made him one of the largest ancient dragons on record, on a par with a small crimson. As it was, assuming his astral density had stayed uniform, he was probably the most powerful dragon ever, of any species, roughly level with Xellos. 

" _That's_ what you were doing?" the princess said, sounding disgusted. 

"It isn't as though you had a better idea," Val retorted. 

"So if a dragon eats a dragon god, is that cannibalism?" the blonde swordsman asked. 

I rolled my eyes—just how stupid _was_ this guy? "No, it's just this fucking crappy language of yours that makes it sound that way. Dragon gods, greater dragons like Val, and lesser dragons like the plasma and lake dragons are about as closely related to each other as they are to you." 

The blonde looked at Val and drew breath to say something else, but Lina Inverse elbowed him in the stomach. 

"He means they're not related at _all_ , jellyfish!" 

"Oh. But they why do they look so much alike?" 

"Ceiphied's idea of a joke," I growled. "Or maybe an intelligence test for mortals." 

"Well, in that case it's no surprise Gourry can't figure it out," his wife said. 

"We get to play 'what do we do next' again now, don't we?" the chimera asked with a sigh. 

"After we get back to Seyruun," I said firmly. "Unless you want to be the one who gets to tell the people who aren't here what they missed." And I was damned if I was going to let anyone move Val before he was ready. The next ten minutes were likely to be as important to his future development as the next ten centuries, and _nothing_ was going to mess that up for him. 

"So you think you're in charge?" a certain sorceress asked scathingly. 

I gave her a smirk. "Want to fight me for it?" It was a safe question. There was nothing she could do to me physically with the weapons she had available to her, and she was severely limited in terms of spellcasting right now. 

"Lords of darkness and of the Four Worlds—" 

" _Lina._ " 

Lina Inverse immediately cut herself off in mid-incantation and scrambled back into a corner of the porch. "S-sorry, sis! It's j-just that—" 

"—he's an abrasive asshole," her sister filled in. "But that doesn't mean you should join him in having no manners." 

"Power levels aside," I added, "you're still not up to date, even if the chimera's letters all got to you and he put absolutely everything he knew in them. And I've been in on this from the beginning. Fill in the missing pieces before you try to do anything stupid, because more stupid is the last fucking thing we need right now." 

Really, I'd never liked might-right as the basis for a hierarchy of command either. It tended to produce idiot commanders and lazy, resentful subordinates. Right now there was no time for anything better, though, and it's always easier to keep what you already have than it is to wrest it away from someone else. 

What to do next . . . it was a problem, I had to admit. We'd already had two skirmishes in the space of twelve hours, and neither of them had been overly successful for either side. We had Taben's sister, but she was almost worthless in the scheme of things, and I hadn't killed Grau. Val had chewed up some cannon fodder and almost lost the Knight of Ceiphied anyway, to an unexpected sneak attack. The Shard had near-infinite amounts of cannon-fodder at its beck and call, and we had only a handful of fighters that could stand up to even a minor Mazoku. 

Time wasn't on our side right now, unless it stretched out long enough for the sorceress' fucking brat to be born, or at least for us to train some viable cannon fodder of our own. If I had been the Shard or its allies, I would just disappear for a couple of months at this point and let us wear ourselves out, nerves stretched like catgut harp strings, never knowing when or from where the next attack would be coming. The chances of another Shard rising during that time were minuscule but non-zero, so waiting for a bit was to their advantage all around. 

That meant we had to draw them out, but I couldn't fucking figure out how. We had a fair number of pieces they wanted, but we would have to make them an offer they couldn't refuse and then come down on them like a ton of bricks from an unexpected angle . . . and we didn't _have_ any unexpected angles. If I could count on my hands the number of people we had who were capable of scrapping with someone on a Shard's level without getting killed immediately, that meant Xellos could too, and he wouldn't allow his side to move unless we were all in plain sight. Decoys, tricks, traps . . . bait. But I needed something that wouldn't involve a major power expenditure . . . Aim for Grau first, maybe. He was the weakest of their major pieces, and also the stupidest. Get him, and I might be able to draw Dynast's attention. Whether _that_ was a good thing or not depended on how closely icicle-brain was working with the slimy little cone, though. Dynast alone was rigid, easy to mess with, but Xellos was twisty enough to see through a lot of the things I might have tried if the opposition had been my dear brother alone . . . 

_I'm actually going to do it._ We'd been opposed for a thousand years, but this would be the first time I deliberately set out to kill my surviving siblings. It felt . . . odd. Even Phibrizzo being gone felt odd, like I'd missed a step while climbing stairs in the dark. It wasn't that there was any love lost between us so much as that their presence had been a constant of my existence. Even Dolphin, the youngest, had come into existence scarcely a decade after I had, and she'd been there ever since. And when your life is as fucked up as mine had become, you tend to hold on to the last little bits of stability with irrational force. 

My senses twinged, and I raised my hand quickly above my head. A stick slammed hard against my palm, and I twisted it, wrenching it from someone's hands. 

A quick glance at it, and I snorted. "You were going to kill me with a fucking _mop handle_?" 

Luna Inverse shrugged. "You seemed to have drifted off into your own little world, and talking at you wasn't doing any good. I figured an attack would get your attention." 

"I guess that shows where Lina gets it," the chimera said. 

The sorceress didn't actually elbow or punch him, but she looked at him like she wanted to. 

Val stirred. "I wouldn't try that again for a while," he said to Luna Inverse as he shifted cautiously on the astral, testing the changes to his body there. "One joke attack with a mop handle is funny in a way, but the second one's an insult." 

"Feeling better?" I asked him. 

My dragon nodded. "I'm still a bit dizzy, but it's passing off." On the astral, a smooth ripple of movement as his tail twined itself with mine. He was comfortable in his own skin again. Good. 

I eased myself to my feet, with Val uncoiling by my side, once more moving with his usual feral grace. 

"You bringing the werewolf?" I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the confused-looking creature. 

"Spot? No, he can stay here and clean up the mess." Luna Inverse didn't even bother to look at her . . . servant? _More like slave,_ I guessed, reaching out to delicately sample the strands of emotion that stretched between them. Irritation and indifference from her; pathetic depression and a bit of fear from the beastman. 

"You've fallen pretty far, Dilgear," said the chimera, quite unexpectedly. 

The beastman's expression became more tired than confused. "I suppose I have, Zelgadis-san—in fact, I'm surprised you recognized me. Luna-sama rescued me after I almost starved to death. I owe her . . ." 

" . . . so much that you'd let her call you by a name most people would only give a pet dog?" 

Dilgear shrugged. "It's better than letting my family find out." 

I snorted. If this one had ever had any spirit, it had been burned out of him long since. There were only ashes left inside him. He wasn't worth my notice. 

"Send him back inside if he's not coming," I said. "This is going to be enough of a pain in the ass without my having to pick apart which mortals I want and which I don't." 

"Where are we going, anyway?" asked Luna Inverse. 

"Seyruun, for the time being," the chimera said. 

"Seyruun? Now, wait a minute—" 

"I didn't say I was offering you a choice," I said, and bent space around the seven of us. It would have been easier if the others had been closer, but it beat having to run after the Knight of Ceiphied. 

I landed us in the grand entryway of the palace, which had a flight of wide, shallow steps in a convenient position. 

"Val and I have other things to do for the rest of the day," I said. "Stay inside the fucking tripwire for now." 

"And try to round up Filia-san," Val added. "If Aunt Lina can teach her the Giga Slave, or at least the Ragna Blade, that would be even better." 

The sorceress' eyes went wide. "You want me to—" 

The chimera took her by the shoulder and pulled her aside for a few moments of quiet . . . discussion. 

"Zel, I still don't think it's a good idea to—" 

"Then come up with a better way of increasing the number of people we have who could actually take out that Shard," I growled, exasperated. "You have until tonight." 

Val was right beside me, so I twisted space one more time and moved us to a sand-floored place full of pale, icy light. 

"I hope you're ready for a long sparring session." I couldn't get the growl out of my voice. 

"I figured you'd have had enough of humans by now." My dragon smiled and took out his lance, grounding it on the sand beside his foot. "And you need time to think." 

"Is it that fucking obvious?" The thought that I could be so easily read—about anything—sent a tremble of disquiet through me. When had I started getting predictable? 

"Only to me, I hope. After all, I've been watching you for hundreds of years. I know what confusion looks like in your eyes. Something's blindsided you and you need to work it out." 

"If you were anyone else—" 

"If anyone else ever learns you that well, I'll kill them myself," my dragon said, eyes flashing. "You're _my_ mate, I'm not sharing you, and no one else has the right to know you that way. That deeply." 

"Jealous," I murmured, grinning. I hadn't expected him to get as possessive of me as I was of him . . . but in retrospect, I should have. Like me, Val had so very little to cling to that it wasn't surprising he'd dig his talons into what he had left. 

"Bet your ass I am," he retorted, and we both chuckled. Then I drew my sword and dumped my coat on one of the benches at the back. 

I don't actually think when I'm fighting, or at least not about anything more distant than staying alive for the next few minutes. It seems to free up part of my mind to turn things over without my having to sift through all the possibilities consciously. And Val was good enough to make me work for my victories, although his spells and his teleports were still too fucking slow. I took advantage of that wherever I could—there's nothing like a few bruises and a little fireball char to convince someone to get his butt in gear, and my dragon knew not to take it personally. Plus, he improved fast, now that there was finally someone pushing him. And he'd learned a few new tricks in the bargain. Every other dragon I'd ever known had to cast spells, but Val had figured out how to fling his astral energy around just as he had when he was part Mazoku, without needing to speak a word, and he swapped methods freely, sometimes in mid-attack. 

We gradually upped the standard on each other until we were flickering in and out at high speed. Val was the first to slip an attack through the astral and back out again instead of just confining himself to the physical, his lance leaving a stripe of blood on my arm as I twisted out of the way. My return blow came down on him from above like a ten-ton boulder, but he bent space just as his shoulders would have slammed into the sand and reversed our positions by reappearing near the ceiling, wings exposed. 

We were both grinning widely by that point, from the pure joy of a fight that wasn't just a form of pest extermination. It wasn't a pleasure either of us could experience often. We were both too powerful and trained to too high a standard. Go through all of history with a fine-toothed comb and you might have found a hundred people who could give either of us a decent match. Maybe. 

I finally brought him down by letting my tail sprout and lashing it around his leg. He swore vilely as his side slammed into the sand and I wrenched his lance away, but his eyes were still sparkling. 

"I surrender," he said. "You still hit too fucking hard . . . but I think I'm back up to speed again. That was . . . what, three hours?" 

"Closer to four," I said. 

"Heh. No wonder I feel like a limp rag. Would have taken me days if I'd done it any other way, though. Looks like we made a bit of a mess," he added, pushing himself back up on one elbow. 

"A bit." The crater at whose center we were lying was about a foot deep, and although I'd restricted my magic so that it was roughly equal to his, there were scorch marks on the walls again. "I'll clean it up later." 

"How about cleaning _us_ up first?" 

"You just want to see me naked." 

"I always want to see you naked," my dragon replied, with a leer. "Just like you always want to see me the same way. And we've got a few more hours of afternoon left. Or do you need more thinking time?" 

I reached over and pulled him in for a kiss, and he began to purr softly, just a hint of vibration in his throat and chest. 

"I think I've got it mostly figured out," I said, breath mingling warmly with his. "But right now I'm more interested in getting naked with you than in a fucking strategy session." And besides, while I could feel that the familiar shift from confusion to certainty had already taken place inside me, I needed a little longer before I'd be able to lay it all out neatly in words. 

"I'm not going to argue. And this would be a lot more fun without the sand." 

I grinned and warped us into the baths, popping us out about a foot above a human-sized pool of warm water. Since I knew what was coming, I was able to hold my breath and brace myself for impact. Val, on the other hand, went under and came up snorting water. 

"I guess I should have expected that," he admitted as he detached strands of wet hair from his face and chest. "Shit, I'm going to have to figure out some better way of dealing with this stuff." 

"There's a reason I tie mine at the bottom," I said easily, pulling the metal ring—worn and scarred, because I'd had it for thousands of years, to the point where the inset design was starting to be rubbed away by time—loose and setting it aside on the edge of the pool. My other clothes I sent elsewhere with a thought, leaving the water that had soaked them behind on my skin. I was going to have to fix the fucking cleaning golem one day soon, before the laundry started taking over the lower parts of the aerie. "You could try that, or braiding it." Or cutting it, but I wasn't about to suggest it to him. I liked running my hands through the heavy, silken mass. 

"Later, maybe." Wet clothing hit the pathway beside the pool with a splat. Val was still in his preferred combat form, with dragon arms and exposed wings, so I wasn't quite sure how he managed to get his shirt off. I also wasn't quite curious enough to ask him. I was too absorbed in watching him move, in the way the muscles in his ass worked as he skinned out of his pants and sent them after the shirt. "Right now I have something else in mind. And if you don't too, I'm losing my touch." 

" _What_ touch?" I growled. "You were a virgin this time—you were a virgin last time—when did you ever have a chance to practice seducing people?" Hard, hot arousal warred with rage: _And who did you seduce, so that I can turn them into blood pudding for touching my mate?_

My dragon laughed. "Not people. _You._ It might have taken me forever to get you to act on it, but I could always make you look." 

"You . . ." I growled the word, low in my throat, and lunged. He stood his ground, spreading his arms and wings. Welcoming me. And I wanted him, ached for him. 

I lifted him onto the edge of the pool, and he spread his legs as well, tilting his hips at a rakish angle so that he was fully exposed for my pleasure. My hand slid down between his thighs, teasing him there as I kissed him again, then began to nuzzle and lick my way down the side of his neck to the shoulder. I took my time as I worked my fingers further back between his legs, feeling a whole-body shiver run through him as I teased at the pucker there. 

"Don't worry about preparing me," he said huskily. "It isn't as though you can do me any real damage, not when this is pure-physical, and I don't care if it hurts a bit. I just want you in me." His cock, which was erect and pointing straight at me, silently reiterated this statement, as did his throaty purr. 

He was right about it being essentially impossible for me to harm him by fucking him, but I still wasn't about to mount him dry, so I called a jar of oil to me from among the endless stacks of maintenance supplies in the old armoury, and slicked myself down. His talons dug into my back as I began to press hurriedly into the tight, warm sheath of his body, and I growled, almost writhing with pleasure-pain. 

The first time we'd done this, I hadn't known how it was supposed to feel. All I'd had for comparison was a few encounters with mortal females, none of which had been intended for my pleasure. They'd all been so fucking fragile—either I'd broken them, by accident or on purpose, or I'd had to be so fucking _careful_ that there was no room for anything else. Val was too strong to break easily, and he welcomed me with a fearless smile and a wriggle of his hips that rubbed his cock against my stomach and sent shockwaves through my entire body. 

"I've been waiting for this," he said, hooking his legs around my body, lifting himself off the stone of the pool's edge as he gripped my shoulders, putting his entire weight on me. I grabbed his ass with both hands, both to support him and to make it easier to thrust. The new angle let me get even deeper inside him, and we both groaned. I didn't know what he was feeling, but the hot, slick channel embracing my cock was incredible. 

His tail materialized out of the astral, stroking the insides of my thighs for a moment before darting away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him dip it in the pot of oil, almost knocking the pot over in the process, before he curved it deep into the water and used the tip to stroke my balls, leaving slick lines behind. It gave me such a jolt that for a moment, I thought I was going to come on the spot . . . Then the tail-tip moved to where I was buried inside him and began to push in alongside me. 

"You're going to burst," I said, startled. 

He laughed, sounding breathless. "Then at least I'll die happy this time, won't I?" 

"Don't even _think_ about dying," I growled back, my eyes widening as he wormed his tail in further, inch by inch . . . _And I thought he was tight before . . . Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye!_

And he somehow still had enough play to rub himself against my body, that was the most incredible part. His taloned fingers dug into my shoulder, creating tiny starbursts of pain at the point of every claw . . . and then his tail jerked as he came, rubbing against me, and I couldn't hold myself back any longer. 

The surge of pleasure as I came pushed me up to the astral for a moment, and I experienced the dissonance of the two of us being locked together in both human and dragon forms simultaneously before I plunged back down again. 

Val had strands of wet teal-coloured hair straggling across his face when I settled fully back into my body, and I pulled a hand out from underneath him and used it to smooth them back into their proper place. He gave me one of those cocky grins of his, and began to purr even more loudly. 

"Next time, I want it to be _your_ tail," he said, and I snorted, feeling a grin of my own playing at the corners of my mouth. 

"You're turning into a fucking hopeless hedonist." 

"If I am, it's all because of you," my dragon said. "I really am going to have to do something about my hair, though." 

"I have an idea about that, but you're going to get off me first." I wiggled my hips a bit, making him laugh again. 

A few moments later, he was standing with his back to me, leaning against the edge of the pool, as I divided his hair into six parts and began to weave the last foot or so of it together in the multi-stranded braid I'd most recently attempted with grass, when I hadn't been able to remember what it was for. 

" . . . That should do it," I said a few moments later. 

Val shook his head—gently, at first, then harder. The braid slapped against his back and arm, but nothing got into his face. 

"Better," he admitted. "But . . . why all this and not just an ordinary braid?" 

"It's the way a lot of the crimson dragon warriors used to wear their hair. I haven't done mine that way in thousands of years, but my hands remember. And it seemed appropriate." Damned right it did—my Val was as fine a warrior as any crimson I had ever known. 

My dragon planted a quick, unexpected kiss on my jaw. "Thank you." He grimaced and added, "Standing in one place wasn't such a good idea, though. I'm starting to get stiff . . . and not in a good way." 

"Time for a slight change of venue, then," I said, and used my power to flick us both about twenty feet to the left. 

"So if you're done thinking about it, what's the plan?" Val asked, leaning back against the edge of the hot pool, his eyes all but slitted with entirely nonsexual pleasure. 

I sighed, feeling the deep knots in my muscles beginning to loosen. Melding my astral body into my physical one might prevent most externally-sourced injuries, but it did nothing for self-inflicted strain. "If I had infinite time, right now I'd be most interested in slipping someone into their camp. Having no intelligence whatsoever is not only a pain in the ass, it's fucking dangerous. But Xellos is already getting humans involved, so I have to assume this is going to be conducted on their timescale, not ours." I'd never imagined I'd be nostalgic for the Shinma War, which had been run on a more dragon-like timescale—years and decades, not hours and days. "And he's likely to be keeping a careful eye on who gets what information in any case—that's part of his specialty. As a strategist, he's bad news. As a tactician, a lot less so. He's not as good at snap decisions as he is at ones with a lot of lead time." 

Val blinked. "How can we force him into a fight when we don't even know where he is? We could parade the four missing pieces of Ruby-Eye in front of him right now and I doubt he'd rise to the bait—he'd be too wary of a trap." 

"But there's one place he has to defend with his life," I pointed out, and waited for him to get it. 

It took a moment . . . but only a moment. "Wolf Pack Island," Val breathed. "But that's . . . Do you seriously think we can?" 

I shrugged. "We just have to look convincing enough for the wolf-bitch to be willing to pull out all the stops. She can't let herself look too weak right now, or her alliance with icicle-ass will fall apart unless the Shard shores it up. And without Xellos there, you and I together are enough to pose a danger to her." In terms of raw power, I was stronger than Zelas, although the difference was only about ten percent. She wasn't going to want to go one-on-one with me if she could help it. "She pretty much _has_ to call Xellos in at some point . . . and then we turn on the slimy little cone and beat him up so thoroughly he won't be capable of oozing around for at least a decade. Or if she doesn't call him, we go after her instead. Her other minions aren't worth worrying about—we can pick them off as they come in. The difficult part's going to be persuading the dragons." 

"You mean the ones from Dragon's Peak?" 

"That's right. We don't need them all—I don't want to leave the north unguarded—but I want enough of them there that Zelas and Xellos won't be able to tell what _you're_ doing." I smirked. "You see, I have one other move in mind for this part of the game, and it involves palming you for a while, if we can get away with it. And if you're willing." 

My dragon grinned. "Just tell me what I have to do."


	29. Filia

I entered the room feeling a bit nervous. Having Zelgadis show up at the temple to talk to me hadn't been unexpected. Having him tell me that we'd be safer at the palace hadn't been so unreasonable either. But _Gaav asked Lina to teach you the Giga Slave_ had been like getting whacked over the head with a mallet. 

I'd immediately refused, of course. I'd been a priestess of Vrabazard; I knew what that spell could do. But the chimera had just shrugged and said, "Okay, fine, _you_ tell him that when he gets back." 

I'd had to nod. I couldn't ask him to deal with a Dark Lord on my behalf, after all. I hadn't spoken to Gaav since he'd been introduced to me as "Red" that day on the front steps of the palace, although I'd seen him when he'd come to the temple with Val. He'd been difficult enough to deal with when he was in hiding with most of his power veiled. I didn't know how I was going to handle him now. 

I'd thought I was used to Mazoku, after having Xellos underfoot for so long. I hadn't realized just how deceptive that had been. The Beast-Priest prided himself on his ability to seem human, and pretended to be nothing worse than a prankster unless his hand was forced. 

Gaav was different. He wasn't in the least afraid of throwing his power around, but even if he chose to hide it, there was no way he could have come across as harmless. There was always a sense of menace around him, something watchful and nasty. It had been there even when I'd been convinced he was a dragon. 

And because of him, I was now trying to slip inside a small sitting room at the Seyruun royal palace without drawing the attention of its current inhabitants. 

I wasn't at all surprised that Lina-san was wearing a rut in the carpet. She was always the kind of person to aim straight ahead at what she wanted (which might bear no resemblance whatsoever to what others wanted or to what anyone might expect her to want), and it made sense that waiting for something to happen got on her nerves. 

"Y'know, Lina . . ." said the familiar blonde man sitting on the sofa over by the window. 

"What is it, jellyfish?" She said it as though it had become a sort of pet name. 

"Are you sure all this pacing is good for the baby?" 

"Do you think I _care_?" Lina snarled. "If not for the _baby_ , then— Oh. Oh, hell. I don't mean that. I don't." She flopped down beside him on the couch, her hand coming to rest on the bulge at her waist. 

"You're just frustrated," Gourry said, putting an arm across her shoulders. "I know, I am too—because without the Sword of Light, there's nothing I can do to help either. We're just gonna have to sit this one out, and trust Zel and the others to make it come out okay." 

"I . . . It's . . ." Lina bowed her head. "I do trust Zel," she told the floor. "And Amelia, too. Even Sis. I know they'll do everything they can. It's just . . . in the end, if their 'everything' isn't good enough, I might have to choose . . . and I can't do it the same way as I did with Phibrizzo, because this time it would be the certainty of losing the baby against the certainty of losing the world, and without a world, she wouldn't have anywhere to _be_ , so we'd lose her anyway. And it isn't _fair_." 

"Nothing ever is," I whispered, feeling tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. 

Lina's head jerked up. "F-filia? I'm sorry, I didn't notice you there." 

"You didn't?" Gourry said. 

"If you saw her, then why didn't you tell me?" 

"Because I couldn't remember her name, and you get mad at me when I say things like, 'Lina, the lady with the tail is here!'" 

"I should have said something when I came in. I didn't mean to eavesdrop." I fumbled my way to a chair and dropped into it, not caring that I was crushing my skirts, creating creases where they'd never been meant to exist. 

"Hey, are you alright?" Gourry always had had more empathy than Lina, despite being as dumb as a plank. 

"I'm fine. I'm still adjusting to not being a single mother anymore, I suppose—that's all." 

"Yeah, we saw Val this morning." Lina looked . . . as sympathetic as Lina ever looked. 

I smiled sadly. "He remembers everything. Apparently he always did remember some of it. He hasn't been unkind, but it's clear that our relationship . . . was never what I thought it was." 

"Oh, Filia . . ." 

"It isn't as though he had a choice, after all. I think that if he had, he would have wanted to join his mate. Ending up in my hands was . . ." I shrugged. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to say. "He calls me 'Filia-san' now, did you know? But Zelgadis is still 'Uncle Zel'. I don't understand what the difference is, inside his head." 

"Well, at least he doesn't hate you." 

_I'm not sure that being treated like a minor acquaintance isn't worse._ But I had no right to force Val to be grateful. I knew that. 

I took a deep breath. "Do you know what I'm supposed to be doing here?" 

Lina nodded. "Gaav wants me to teach you the Giga Slave. I won't, though." 

"That's fine. I don't want to learn it." 

"I figured you might not. Sylphiel freaked out when she found out I knew it, and I thought that might be a priestess thing. Or, um, ex-priestess." Lina leaned back against Gourry's arm. "Still, I do understand where Gaav's coming from. Destroying even a small piece of Shabranigdo . . . It isn't going to be easy, and I can't help much right now. I _am_ sure that teaching the Giga Slave to anyone we think might be able to cast it isn't the answer, though. That spell's too much of a gamble. Hell, _I_ never want to cast it again, and I've gotten it right two times out of three." 

"So how _do_ we kill the Shard?" I asked. 

"Well, that's the problem. On the one hand we've got Shabranigdo, and on the other we've got Dynast, Zelas, maybe Dolphin, and all their minions. Judging from what Zel said, Gaav _thinks_ he's got more power than this piece of Shabranigdo and might be able to take it _if_ we can get the two of them alone. _But_ that means getting rid of the three other Dark Lords and their Priests and Generals." 

"We can't do that," I said. 

"I can't see why _not_. I've already taken out Hellmaster, so we know it isn't impossible." 

"I don't mean we _aren't capable of_ doing it, I mean that it would be dangerous if we tried it and succeeded." 

"What do you mean?" 

I sighed. "It's a priestess thing, as you would call it, again. In some weird kind of way, the Mazoku are necessary to counterbalance the power of Ceiphied. I don't entirely understand it myself—I was never more than a lesser priestess and I'm not much good at cosmology—but it isn't random chance that each of the Four Worlds started out with both a Dragon God and a Dark Lord. The symmetry is necessary somehow." 

Lina developed a sudden sickened expression. "Then . . . the Overworld . . . when we defeated Dark Star . . ." 

I shook my head. "Night Dragon Volfied had merged with Dark Star, remember? So we did equal damage to both sides of the balance there. And in the case of Phibrizzo, you actually _improved_ the balance by countering Ragradia's death. If you take out three of the others this time, though, Gaav will be left to counterbalance Vrabazard, Valwin, and Rangort all by himself, and I don't think he's powerful enough to make it work." 

"And if the balance got that badly upset, what would happen?" 

I shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I don't know if anyone knows. My guess is that in this case, the other Shards would start waking up until there were enough of them to make things more-or-less stable again. Otherwise . . . the world might disintegrate and fall into the Sea of Chaos, accomplishing the goal the Mazoku have been chasing all along. Or nothing at all might happen, and we'd end up with a perfect paradise ruled by the three remaining Dragon Gods and a grumpy Chaos Dragon. I don't want to risk it. Do you?" 

"I could just take out a couple of Dragon Gods too—" 

"Lina-san!" I might not be willing to serve Vrabazard anymore, or be proud of what His followers had done, but the thought of killing Him was worse than obscene. 

"Okay, okay. I never did like that part of the plan very much, anyway. Killing Phibrizzo took a Giga Slave, and there's no reason to believe any of the others would be any easier. The problem is that I've had no luck so far coming up with a Plan B." She sighed. "Maybe Gaav will do better. He might be an asshole, but he was brought into existence to lead Shabranigdo's armies. In theory, he should be good at planning. If we can trust him." 

"I don't think he's likely to go back to the Mazoku side." Or more accurately, I couldn't see Val supporting him if he did—not even the new, changed Val, who was so much like Valgaav. 

"That doesn't mean he's on _our_ side, though," Lina pointed out. Then she shivered. "Ugh. I don't like thinking about it, but our best hope might actually be . . . my big sis." 

I blinked, surprised. "Luna is here?" 

"Somewhere. That's how we ran into Val this morning—he and Amelia had gone to fetch her, they got attacked by Mazoku, and Gaav somehow noticed that Val was in danger and took off like a cannonball, dragging Gourry and Zel and I along. Then he yanked everyone back here and went off alone with Val to do . . . whatever they do when they're alone." 

"Sparring, mostly, in this case," Val offered with a quirky, lopsided grin as he stepped through the door. "I don't say we could have let you watch the _whole_ time, but most of it was pretty inoffensive by the standards of anyone who would make a friend of Lina Inverse." 

" _Hey!_ You take that back!" Lina took a swing at Val, who sidestepped smoothly and then caught her as she overbalanced and almost fell. 

"You're lucky that didn't connect," stated a much deeper voice. Gaav was tall enough that he had to duck to get inside, and once he'd made it, he closed the door, folded his arms, and leaned against it. 

"Argh! Let me go, you, you . . ." 

"Dragon?" Val suggested, setting her back on her feet. When had he started wearing his hair that way, half-braided down his back? "By the way, I hope you weren't suggesting I need you to protect me from her," he added to the big Mazoku. 

Gaav chuckled. "No, but I would have kept anyone from interfering while you dealt with her to _your_ satisfaction. Which probably wouldn't have made anyone here happy, except the two of us." 

"You . . . _wouldn't_ have . . . ?" The words escaped me before I could stop myself. 

"I'm not an egg or a hatchling or some helpless virginal human girl," Val said, his grin vanishing. "I don't want to be coddled, Filia-san. I never did, but you . . . trying to make you understand that was always such a pain in the ass." 

"I'm sorry." What else could I say? 

"Stop apologizing! Do you think I expect someone your age to have the least idea of how to raise even a normal hatchling? You did the best you could. I just want you to _understand_ why things have turned out the way they have, not this constant litany of _sorry-sorry-sorry._ _Sorry_ doesn't change the past. It can't bring back the dead, or let you make choices over again. I want you to see me for who I really am, but if you don't care—" 

" _Of course I care!_ " I was yelling the way I might have at Xellos. And my hands were shaking. Val had been the focus of my world for the past twenty years, but everything had changed in a single instant when he'd remembered . . . "I just . . . you're not . . ." I wanted to cry so very, very badly. Or swing my mace at him, but I couldn't do that to my baby, no matter how strained relations between us got. 

Val hated it when I cried. He'd hated it from the moment he'd hatched, screaming to drown me out. Now he looked confused and helpless. 

I took a deep breath and counted to ten and told myself that I'd be hysterical later. It was a skill I'd been forced to learn as a mother. "Sometimes you remind me of things I'd rather forget," I admitted. Death raining from the skies . . . being forced to grip Ragud Mezegis by a cage of iron-strong fingers . . . _You're going to end the world with your own hand . . ._

"Your memories of the Dark Star incident are probably clearer than mine," Val said with a grimace. "When I cast my mind back to those days, it's as though I'm walking through a nightmare, one of those ones where you're doing things that make perfect sense in the dream but seem nonsensical when you wake up. It's disturbing." 

"You would have been suffering from astral imbalance," Gaav rumbled, and I caught a hint of something in his expression that spoke of . . . guilt? Was he honestly feeling _guilty_? I'd spent a lot of time watching Xellos, but I'd never seen anything that would have suggested _he_ was capable of feeling _anything_ like that. Was it because Gaav wasn't a pure Mazoku anymore, or just an intrinsic difference in their personalities? "It's surprising you remember anything at all." 

Val squared his shoulders. "Well, it isn't as though we came here to talk about this. We should be discussing the plan." 

"With _us_?" Lina said. "I would have thought you'd want Zel, or maybe even . . . Sis . . ." 

"With Filia-san," Val admitted with a grimace. 

"Well, I'm sorry talking to me is such a chore," I said. 

Val closed his eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound that way." He took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. "I need you to go with me to Dragon's Peak." 

Which wasn't what I had expected. Although I wasn't quite sure what I _had_ expected. "What? Why?" 

"Because I doubt Milgazia will give me the time of day if I go alone or with Gaav. We need at least a couple of dozen other dragons for what we're planning." 

"So what _are_ you planning?" Lina asked. 

Val glanced at Gaav. The tall Mazoku nodded slightly. 

"An assault on Wolf Pack Island," Val said. 

I froze in place. Lina's jaw dropped, and she spluttered for a moment. 

" _Wolf Pack Island?_ " the sorceress spluttered. "Are you two _trying_ to commit suicide?" 

Gaav gave her a cold, narrow-eyed look. "Have you forgotten who I am?" His power surged up, filling the room with Mazokuness. The temperature seemed to drop by at least five degrees. I shivered, even though no one else seemed to be bothered. 

"We can't afford to hide in some safe little burrow right now," Val added. "Our best chance of keeping the world from ending involves taking the fight to them. If you have a better idea of how to do that . . ." 

Lina shook her head, looking as though she wanted to blow something up very, very badly. 

"But why dragons?" It was Gourry that asked that, surprisingly enough. "Wouldn't it be easier to . . . I don't know, call out the navy or something, since it's an island and all?" 

"We want to make this look convincing," Val said. "And we don't want too many casualties. Dragons have natural attacks that penetrate the astral. If we wanted to take humans, we'd have to arm them with enchanted weapons if we wanted them to be effective at all." 

"I'm surprised you care if anyone gets killed," Lina said. 

Gaav shrugged. "I'm a pragmatist. The soldier who gets himself killed fighting for you today isn't there to fight for you tomorrow. So all things being equal, I prefer to keep my troops, and my allies, alive." 

"If it's any consolation, I'll probably be the safest person there," Val added. "Since Xellos kind of likes you, Filia-san, and he knows that I . . . matter to you. So he won't harm me without giving it a lot of thought." 

"That Mazoku garbage does _not_ like me!" I spluttered. 

"Doesn't he?" Lina looked thoughtful. "It isn't like you're the only golden dragon around—you're not even the only one he's met while travelling with us, but as far as I know he doesn't go hundreds of miles out of his way just to pester Milgazia. So I think he does like you. Whatever that means for a pure Mazoku." A pause. " _Does_ it mean anything for pure Mazoku?" 

"Yeah, it does," Gaav said. "Just not the same thing as it does for humans, or even dragons. For one thing, it means Xellos probably wouldn't be very happy if he were ordered to kill one of you, or the chimera or his princess. That _doesn't_ mean the slimy cone would be able to stop himself from doing it, but he'd wrack his brains looking for a loophole." 

"I've never really understood why you guys allow that," Lina said. "Creative interpretation of your instructions by lower-level Mazoku, I mean. So much for total loyalty." 

Unexpectedly, Gaav chuckled. "You're thinking of the loyalty Mazoku show to their lords as a purely social contract—the sort of thing that might exist between two humans. It isn't." 

I was still trying to figure out what he was talking about when Lina said, "So you mean it's a spell of some kind?" 

"Not a spell, but magically enforced. A new Mazoku never _completely_ separates from its parent—there's always a line of astral force between them that the senior Mazoku can use to enforce its will on the junior. Under some circumstances the bond can be transferred, but eliminating it is . . . pretty fucking difficult. That's one of the reasons why, if old Ruby-Eye showed up right now and offered to put me back the way I was, I'd tell him to go fuck himself. I like being a free agent." 

_So it's impossible to reform a Mazoku. Unless you do something to make him not really a Mazoku anymore._ Why did I see a flicker of purple in my mind's eye as that thought passed through my head? Familiar purple. Priest's-hair purple. _What am I thinking?!_

"What other differences are there between you and a normal Mazoku?" Lina was asking. 

"I'm not here to satisfy your curiosity, Lina Inverse." 

"No, you're here to recruit Filia for this hair-brained scheme of yours, and you didn't bring so much as a plate of oatmeal cookies to use as a bribe." 

Gourry blinked and refocused on the room. "Cookies? Where?" Everyone ignored him. 

"And besides," Lina continued, "if I don't know what you're capable of, how can I trust you to protect her? Or are you going to claim that you know _for sure_ that Xellos isn't going to be waiting when she and Val get to Dragon's Peak? Milgazia didn't seem to have much luck keeping him out the last time we were up there." 

Gaav scowled. "If you get in my way, you'll find yourself giving birth to a litter of skunk-men." 

"You know, I don't think you can actually do that." 

There was that nasty smile again. "Try me." 

"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer the oatmeal cookies?" Val asked. 

Lina rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't trust anything you two produced at this point not to be poisoned. If you want to do something useful, convince your overgrown boyfriend to answer my question." 

"Fuck, you're persistent," Gaav grumbled. "All right. From what I've seen of you, you'd be able to work most of it out if you spent some time thinking about it, anyway." He paused briefly. "My . . . current condition doesn't change my fundamental nature. I'm still a Mazoku; I still have access to all the power I did before; the bulk of my being still resides on the astral; I still feed off the so-called 'dark' emotions of those around me. The first significant difference is that this body is purely of the physical plane and not an astral projection, although it's conjoined with my astral body as a dragon's would be. I can't dissolve it and withdraw fully into my true form, which means that unless I'm in a trance state, part of my attention is always locked to the physical. That's how Phibrizzo slipped past me for his little backstab—I'm constantly aware of the astral plane, but it's more like peripheral than central vision unless I'm focusing on that side, so I miss a lot of details. As a trade-off, I get some protection from astral attacks, although it's obviously not complete." 

"And the other difference is that you're stuck with a human soul," Lina said. 

Gaav shrugged. "I'm not sure how much effect that really has on me, except that it puts me on the same fucking reincarnation merry-go-round as the rest of you. Since that's the reason I'm still alive, it's difficult for me to complain about it." He still didn't look too pleased, though. 

"And as an astral being, the primary seat of your memory and personality are still on that plane and not this one," Lina concluded. "Well, that does explain some things I've been wondering about." 

"Lina Inverse." Gaav's voice dropped half an octave, if that was even possible. "If you attempt to use _any_ of this information against me, I will kill you. And I won't underestimate you this time—I'll come myself, and I won't play around." 

" _We'll_ come _ourselves_ , you mean," Val said. His grin was sharp-edged, all teeth. "I'm not taking any more chances with you." 

"Stubborn dragon," the big Mazoku said, his tone . . . almost tender. "All right. I won't fight you about it." 

Val dipped his head. 

"Okay, okay, I get it," Lina said. "I'll keep my mouth shut. I wish I could go with you, though. Sitting all of this out is going to be one of the hardest things I've ever done." 

Gourry put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. 

"We'd be happier if we could have you along too," Val said. "If nothing else, threatening to Giga Slave the entire island would probably get Xellos out there pretty damned fast. Assuming Zelas didn't decide to defend her home in person. And you improvise pretty well." 

Lina flushed. She really wasn't used to compliments, I realized—not real ones. 

"Filia-san, can you be ready to go in half an hour?" Val asked. 

I blinked. "I'd thought . . . tomorrow . . . There's no way we can fly that far before dark!" 

Val shook his head. "I don't intend to waste time flying, I intend to teleport straight there. Time is more important right now than the risk of offending a few stuffy Elders." 

_When we need to persuade him to help us?_

Lina had already followed that idea through to its conclusion. "Val . . . you don't intend to _threaten_ Milgazia into giving you those dragons, do you?" 

"If that's what it takes." 

"Was this your idea?" Lina asked, looking at Gaav. 

The big Mazoku shook his head. "No, but it's likely that the only way to get the dragons to move in a timely manner is going to be to threaten them. They don't operate on a human timescale, but it looks like this war is going to be fought on one. If we leave it up to them, it'll be three years before they're done flapping their fangs and come back to us with a decision, if they don't just say 'no' outright." 

"Come to think of it," Lina said slowly, "it took Xellos to convince Milgazia to let me use the Claire Bible. I'd almost forgotten." 

"Older dragons . . . don't always move quickly," I admitted. "They have good reasons for not rushing things." 

"And we have good reasons _for_ rushing them right now," Val said. "Filia-san, please don't argue with us on this." 

"I'm not arguing!" Or at least, I hadn't _meant_ to argue . . . "I understand why this is important, I just think there should be a better way." 

Lina rolled her eyes. "And the Shard _should_ just quietly take up knitting as a hobby and give up on world destruction. But it won't." 

"No," Val said, "it won't. Any more than I would have given up revenge. Half an hour, Filia-san. I'm sorry for doing this to you." 

And he ended the conversation by vanishing from the middle of the room without any additional word. 

Oddly enough, Gaav didn't follow suit. Instead, he spent several seconds just standing there with his back to the door, frowning at nothing. When he finally moved from his position, he didn't immediately teleport out of the room, either. Instead he followed the wall, moving toward the left side of the room. 

Toward me. 

I tried to tell myself that I was surprised when he stopped in front of me. I didn't really believe me, though. Mazoku always seemed to single me out for special attention, and I hated it. 

I'd made an idiot of myself often enough with Xellos that I gritted my teeth and fought for self-control as Gaav reached down and gripped my chin between big, rough fingers, forcing me to tilt my head up. I could feel the tension in my lower back that meant my tail was about to pop out, though, and my hand itched for my mace. 

He took his time, just staring into my face with eyes the cold greenish blue of the Arctic ocean up beyond the Kataarts. Then suddenly, he sighed and let me go. I rubbed my chin, but there wasn't even a hint of a bruise. He'd been careful. 

"Filia, wasn't it? You're under my protection henceforth. I'm sure you don't want it, but I'm fucking well not going to let him lose anything else." 

I was still gaping as he flickered out, heading off to confer with Zelgadis or whatever it was that he intended to do. 

"Filia? Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine, Lina-san, just a bit startled." 

I hadn't quite believed until then that Gaav really did return Val's feelings.


	30. Val

Wind whistled up under the edges of my shirt as I dropped from my arrival point several feet in the air to stand on a rocky ledge. Midsummer this high in the Kataart Mountains felt like spring at Seyruun's lower altitude and latitude, but I ignored the chill—the astral power that saturated my body prevented any damage from extremes of temperature, and I didn't give a damn about mere discomfort. Not when I had a job to do. 

Filia, on the other hand, shivered. And shivered again as a large golden-yellow form dropped from the sky to land on the wider, flatter space below us. 

"Milgazia-san?" Her voice was barely above a whisper, but he heard. 

"Filia-san? Is that you?" His head rose until it was level with us. "And you must be young Val. You've matured greatly since I last saw you." 

"It would be more accurate to say that I regained what I lost," I said, and Milgazia's head jerked up, eyes widening. "You'll probably be relieved to know that I don't have any intention of trying to blow up the world again," I added with a smirk. "However, that isn't why we're here." 

A moment of silence. "I have an odd suspicion that you would prefer not to discuss the true purpose of your visit in the open," Milgazia said. 

"You'd be right about that." 

He rubbed his nose-horn with the back of a talon. "I think tea is in order, then. If you could come down here?" 

Filia teleported down to the edge of the ridge Milgazia was crouched on. I just jumped, hearing the wind whistle briefly past my ears, and landed neatly on my feet, absorbing the impact as I'd learned to do long ago. 

Milgazia's body became an outline made of golden light, which condensed itself down into a human shape before fading. His clothing, I noted, was that of a paladin, a warrior in the service of the Dragon Gods—more convenient than the priestess robes that Filia still used as everyday wear, twenty years after she'd left the service of the Fire Dragon King. They might be self-cleaning, but I couldn't see how that would balance out the voluminousness of the skirts. Even Princess Amelia preferred trousers for travelling. _And I'm pretty desperate for distraction if I'm analyzing the princess' travel trousseau._

But the truth was, I was nervous. I couldn't help it any more than I could let Filia or Milgazia see it. Since I'd been a very small hatchling indeed, I'd spoken to no more than a dozen other dragons, unless you counted arguing with Almayce while floating near the ceiling of the Fire Dragon Temple as _speaking_ to everyone present, which I, personally, didn't. 

The only golden dragon I'd ever really _known_ at more than a superficial level was Filia, and Milgazia was a male four times her age from a different tribe, which made her motivations mostly useless as a gauge of his. Manipulating him into doing what we needed was going to be difficult, but negotiating in good faith was hopeless: when he heard Gaav was involved, and since it was only my mate's involvement that made our plan possible in the first place I had no choice but to tell him, he was likely to . . . become uncooperative. Not that the chances of him wanting to cooperate would have been all that high even without that wrinkle. 

Milgazia led us into a cave opening large enough to be accessed by a dragon, then turned off down a smaller, human-scale hallway spell-cut into the rock. We walked past several curtained archways before he chose an opening on the left and ushered us inside. 

It was a sitting room of sorts, although not nearly as comfortable as the ones in the royal palace of Seyruun. The furniture, while finely made, was solid stone with only a few blankets to cushion it. There was an unlit brazier in one corner with a copper kettle suspended over it, and not far from it, a shelf stuck out of the wall, the better to display a fine china tea service. 

Milgazia filled the kettle and lit the brazier with a series of muttered spells, and gestured for us to sit down while he began to measure tea from a canister into the china teapot. 

I perched on a stone bench, discovering that it had some kind of spell on it that made it a lot less uncomfortable than it looked. Still, why not just pad the damn thing then cast as many preservation spells as you needed to let it survive the years and occasional eruptions of tails or Laser Breath? Doing things this way seemed like a lot of unnecessary work. 

With nothing left to do until the kettle boiled, Milgazia came over to stand by the chairs. "You don't seem to have recovered your Mazoku nature along with your memory, although there are traces of taint in you," he said to me without preamble. 

I shrugged. "I had a lot of problems balancing the two types of energy before, and I don't have time for that right now. Until we're sure that the world is safe, I'm better off as I am." 

The golden gave me a long, thoughtful look. "Even without the Mazoku elements, your power is terrifying. I have never seen another dragon like you, even among the ancients that I knew in the days before the Kouma War." 

_You knew them? Knew my people? Did you ever meet—_ I swallowed it all back, hard enough to choke myself. Swallowed it before I could even think my father's name, or my mother's. I hadn't cared about such things since that terrible night in the desert—why would they all surge to the surface now? 

"I accidentally ate part of Ceiphied," I said, and maybe I'd tried a little too hard to sound casual, because Milgazia's eyes widened. It was the first real expression I'd seen on him. 

"You . . . _ate_ . . . part of . . ." 

"I was trying to decontaminate the Knight of Ceiphied's astral form after a Mazoku attack, and the energies she was carrying decided that they liked me." I finished by shrugging again. 

Milgazia still looked like someone had hit him over the head with a large rock. "I believe this is unprecedented. You . . ." He shook his head. "I cannot even begin to imagine what the dragon gods have in store for you." 

_Whatever it is, they can take it and—_ I swallowed the irritated comment and the growl that was trying to claw its way up my throat, selecting instead, "I doubt very much that they have anything in mind for me at all. Considering my history." Swallow, and swallow again. This wasn't the time to rain curses down on Vrabazard's head or explain that my mate and mentor would go ballistic if I bared my nape for those he had fought since the dawn of time. 

I had to be _diplomatic_. 

That thought was almost enough to make me snarl all on its own. 

The kettle whistled, cutting into the sudden stillness. A moment later, Milgazia unfroze and went to pour the boiling water into the teapot, then brought the entire service over to place on the low table in front of Filia. 

"I assume that the reason you're here has something to do with the . . . circumstances that have lately arisen to the south," the golden dragon elder said after several moments spent contemplating the teapot. 

"Yes, it does," Filia said in a low voice, also staring at the tea things. 

"We have a request to make of you," I said, when she seemed unwilling to continue. "We believe that Xellos is in control of the Mazoku operation, rather than the Shard of Shabranigdo itself, and we've determined that his most likely course of action at this time is to try to wait us out. We want your people's assistance in forcing his hand." 

"What type of assistance?" 

I took a deep breath. _There's no point in lying now._ "We want some volunteers to help us stage a convincing attack on Wolf Pack Island. A dozen if we can get them. Two dozen would be better." 

Milgazia's eyes flashed as he said, in a hard but level tone, " _Absolutely not._ " 

The silence was colder and thicker than Seyruun's famous soft-serve ice cream, and it seemed to go on forever. Filia eventually broke our tableau by reaching for the teapot. Her hand shook as she poured. 

"Why not?" I asked, forcing calm on myself. 

"Can you guarantee their safety?" Milgazia asked. 

"Of course not—we're talking about _fighting a war_. Or at least a minor skirmish." 

"And that is exactly why not. You, I suspect, are just a little too young to remember the Kouma War and the decimation of our kind that resulted from it. You have no idea of the horror—" 

My patience snapped, and I shot from my chair and grabbed the golden bastard by the collar, yanking him bodily from his seat and glaring into his eyes. 

"Remember who you're talking to, _coward_. Are you trying to say that I have no idea what death and destruction are? Do you have any idea what it's like to crouch beside your mother's cooling body, underneath her wing, and watch a fellow fucking _dragon_ bash another hatchling's head open against the ground? To feel your bond to your mate snap and know that the last person you ever loved is gone forever? To think of death itself not as a thing to be avoided, but as a reward, because the universe is made of pain and there's no other way to escape it? And you think that a dozen dragons is too high a price to pay for _saving the fucking world? You shame your dead!_ " 

Milgazia was trying to pry my hand loose. I let my fingers become talons and locked them even more firmly into the fabric. Let him tear his tunic, or try to find a pressure point . . . or try to kick me in the nuts. I didn't much care, I just didn't want to make it easy for him. 

"If I shame _my_ dead, then what of you?" he asked, still in that level tone. "To raise your hand against another thinking being . . . your people considered that the worst of crimes." 

" _Do you think I don't know that?_ " The words were so bitter I almost choked on them. "If there were any others left, they would shun me as a violator of our most sacred laws. Is that _really_ the example you want to emulate?" I wondered if Milgazia realized that I meant true ritual shunning, that they wouldn't just try to avoid me but would refuse to speak to or interact with me if they did come across me—the ultimate punishment of a pacifist people. 

Milgazia didn't say anything for several long moments. It was only after I released my grip on him and let him drop back to his chair that he spoke. 

"Forgive me. You are quite correct: I have become a coward, but what Xellos did to us during the Kouma War was, if perhaps not unimaginably brutal, then at least intensely so. He destroyed thousands of us with one wave of his hand. And the members of my clan who are most likely to volunteer for your expedition are precisely those hotheaded hatchlings who _aren't_ old enough to know what they'd be walking into. I can't let them go up against the Beastmaster and her Priest." 

I shook my head. "The normal dragons won't be tangling with either of them. Don't forget that I know _exactly_ how powerful Xellos is—I've fought him, one on one. And he didn't come out on top. Gaav and I will be taking responsibility for handling the higher Mazoku. If we set things up right, we should be able to isolate Xellos and smash him into pudding. There's a limit to how much Zelas is likely to do to save him." I didn't know if Milgazia was the kind to want revenge, but I'd just held it out to him on a platter, along with the faintest hints of a threat. If he wasn't willing to fight Xellos, it should follow that he wasn't willing to fight me, either, much less Gaav. 

"I'd heard that the Chaos Dragon had somehow turned up alive, and allied himself with Seyruun. The news did not exactly fill me with delight. I suppose it's inevitable that you would trust him, given your history together, but I do not. He left the Mazoku faction for his own reasons; he could return to them just as easily." 

_You know nothing about him._ "I'd consider that about as likely as him becoming a priest of Ceiphied," I said, and Filia choked on her tea. "I suppose it's possible that some of the other Mazoku would come over to _his_ side, but he would rather wipe himself from existence than ever serve Ruby-Eye again. He's absolutely dedicated to safeguarding this world." 

"You seem very certain of that." 

"He has something he wants to protect," Filia said. Milgazia blinked. So did I, but not for the same reason. I hadn't expected that Filia would actually be _useful_ in this negotiation, after her presence got me in the door—hell, I hadn't even been sure she would take my side. "I didn't believe it either at first," she said, sipping at her tea. "But it's true. He loves Val deeply, and they both seem convinced that they're mated." 

That froze Milgazia again, with his teacup halfway between his saucer and his mouth. He stared at me for several long moments. "You . . . mated . . . with _that_?" 

"Are you going to say that I'm a traitor to the dragon race now?" I asked. 

"I honestly don't know. This is just as unprecedented as the other." The golden took a deep gulp of his tea, not just a polite sip, showing how rattled he was. "I hope you don't have any more surprises for me. I'm not sure my heart would take it." 

"I don't think I do," I said. "I don't have any bribes to offer you, so we can move straight to the threats and extortion." I let energy crackle between my fingers. "Let us recruit some dragons for this venture, or I'll blow the top off your mountain. Or I could call my mate in—it's his plan, after all, and he will be very annoyed if we aren't able to execute it. We don't need _all_ of you alive to guard the north." 

If it was possible, Milgazia became . . . even less present behind his face then. It was as though he was wearing a mask. "I suppose I have no choice. I will assemble those I consider most likely to accept your . . . plea for assistance. You can make your case to them. And I will go with you as well." 

I blinked. "You? Why? I thought your fighting days were over, old dragon." 

"Do you think I trust you and that mate of yours to look after those children?" Milgazia had an unexpected glint in his eye. "I've met Maryuu-oh Gaav. I've seen him fight. Once he gets started, I doubt he'll have any attention to spare for . . . mere mortal creatures." 

"You're underestimating him." Damn, but the impulse to growl at this ignorant golden was strong . . . "He was the main general of the Mazoku troops, if you'll recall, and switching allegiances hasn't caused him to lose any of his skills. He'll be keeping track of every damned dragon, including you." 

"Up to a certain point, perhaps." 

"Up to the point where you manage to vanish from the astral," I said. Milgazia sort of blinked at me, so I added, "He's taught me the technique involved, but I can't really use it in combat yet—I can't hold the necessary awareness in my mind and protect myself at the same time." Just setting up a bird's-eye view of the astral was difficult enough, involving a weird manipulation of that plane that both was and wasn't a spell to position my viewpoint there outside of my astral body. Keeping that view constantly at the back of my mind while I did something else was worse. And he'd taught me how to do it only a few years before he'd died, which meant that I hadn't spent much time practicing. "The simple truth is that you don't trust him. Or me. Not that I expected anything else. Can we agree that none of us want Shabranigdo back, at least?" 

Milgazia sighed and inclined his head. "Yes, I suppose we can agree on that. Finish your tea." 

_Damned goldens and their damned tea._ I drank the lukewarm stuff quickly, but Filia insisted on sipping hers more slowly, temperature be damned. 

"This is a good blend," she said when she at last set her cup down. "I don't suppose . . ." 

"I can arrange to have some sent to you," Milgazia said. "Are you still living in Sandy Point?" 

Filia nodded. "Or at least that's where I'll be going back to when this is all over." 

"Very well. I'll go summon the children now. Wait here." Milgazia flickered out of existence. 

"He pushed us to finish our tea and then just left us sitting here anyway?" I grumbled. 

"He needs some time to pull himself together, I think," Filia said. "You surprised him more than he's willing to admit." 

I snorted. "Well, I suppose we've secured the help of one golden dragon, at least. Although that isn't going to be enough to carry out the attack as planned." 

" _Two_ golden dragons," Filia corrected. "I'm going too." 

She must have read the expression on my face, because she said, "Is that such a surprise? Did you really think I'd let you go alone? I . . . still want to protect you, Val. And I want to help you." 

_And I can't afford to say no, damn it._ But I wanted to. _You're just a child! A mere three-hundred-year-old! You have no idea what you're getting into!_

Of course, that was no different from the other young dragons I was hoping would volunteer. I doubted we were going to get any veterans other than Milgazia . . . unless we got _only_ veterans out to protect their hatchlings from all of this. I doubted that would work, though. We'd just get some of the young hotheads tagging along too, and we'd probably have to knock their heads together before they would take orders, _and_ the watch on Lei Magnus wouldn't be kept up properly if too much of the community decided they wanted to join in the fun . . . 

"This isn't going to be like following Lina and the others around," I warned Filia. "You're going to have to be ready to kill Mazoku, and you've known Xellos long enough and well enough to be aware that Mazoku are people—just not very nice ones." The half-a-joke fell flat, but I hadn't had high hopes for it anyway. 

"It's them or the world," she said. "I know that. I'm prepared." 

"If you sure, then I can't refuse you. We need all the help we can get." But I still didn't want her involved. I wanted . . . to keep her safe. Not with the same intensity as I wanted Gaav's safety, and I knew what I would do if it came to a choice between them, but . . . 

I shook my head. _You succeeded, and you aren't even aware of it. Your love and your patience have made me care about more than the tiny sliver of the world that exists between him and me._

_I wonder what you would say if you knew._


	31. Zelgadis

"Arrgh!" 

I wanted to pull a Lina and start yelling and hurting people, but even if I'd been that kind of person, it would have been improper for the Crown Princess' consort _and_ useless against the person I most wanted to pummel, so I had to content myself with packing all of my irritation and frustration into a single grumbling groan, while hiding out on a balcony in the private wing of the palace and praying to Ceiphied that I wasn't going to be spotted for at least a little while. 

It wasn't that Gaav was trying to give me a hard time, exactly. It was just that he wasn't willing to let me off the hook, either, and he knew how to keep the pressure on. Living space for thirty dragons _in dragon form_ for up to two days "just in case". Thirty _black_ dragons, at that. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and when I asked him if he had any idea just how _big_ a black dragon was, he'd raised one bushy eyebrow and quoted numbers at me—maximum, minimum _and_ average dimensions and weights. And then he'd stood over me until I'd worked out something involving a large chunk of crown-owned waste land outside the city. 

I sighed, leaning on the balcony railing and letting the breeze flow through wire hair that it wasn't strong enough to ruffle. I hadn't realized it until this very moment, but I'd been dealing with Gaav using a cross between the protocol I used for handling Lina and the one I used for Xellos. _I guess you really can get used to just about anything._

"Copper for your thoughts?" 

I blinked in surprise at the person who had just put her hand beside mine on the railing. "Luna-san. I haven't seen you since we got back here." Which had only been about eight hours ago, even if it felt like it had been much longer. 

"I've been lying down. I still feel . . . not-right, although it's a difficult kind of not-rightness to describe. I don't think having chunks bitten out of me on the astral agrees with me." The wind ruffled her bangs, but not strongly enough to give me a glimpse of her eyes. If I hadn't known better I would have wondered if she had any. 

"I'm really sorry about that," I said. 

She shook her head. "In all fairness, it probably did save my life. That dragon thinks quickly on his feet. More quickly than I do." A soft laugh. "He was right, you know. Papa and Mama did train me to fight, but not at that level, and I've let what skills I mastered get rusty with disuse. Mazoku showing up at the cafe wasn't a scenario I'd ever envisioned." 

I blinked. "You're not at all what I expected from what Lina's said about you." 

"Oh, Lina." Luna's smile looked tired. "Tell me, Zelgadis-san, do you know how old I was when she was born?" 

"About seven or eight, I think," I replied. 

"Yes, and I'd gotten very used to being an only child. Lina's arrival disrupted my entire life. I hated her beyond belief back then, so of _course_ I set out to make her life hell. Do you know how big and strong and terrible eleven looks when you're three?" 

"Oh." It was pretty obvious, when you thought about it. 

"You did strike me as the smartest of Lina's companions—not that I mean your wife is stupid, but she's more . . . how should I put this . . . active than contemplative?" 

"That's Amelia," I admitted. It was part of the reason she and I had come to work so well together. 

"So you see," Luna said, "my sister has an exaggerated idea of my abilities. Being the Knight of Ceiphied gives me some power, yes, but most of the time it's more awful than helpful. And it didn't come with an instruction manual, either. The only actual _knowledge_ I got from Ceiphied involves what it feels like to die. Over and over and over again. Beyond that, I've had to feel my way through everything. Half the time I have no idea what I'm doing with my power at all. Maybe your dragon friend can make better use of what he absorbed, since it's clear that _someone_ took the time to train him. But if he ever bites me again, I'm going to do my damndest to knock him into next week." 

"I don't think Val enjoyed what happened very much either," I said. 

"He got indigestion. I got _eaten_ , or at least part of something loosely attached to me did. It isn't the same thing at all." 

There wasn't much I could say to that. I'd had plenty of odd and unpleasant things happen to me over the years, especially when I'd been travelling with Lina, but being partially eaten by a dragon hadn't been among them. 

"We can still count on your help, though." I tried to make it sound like a statement, not a question. 

"For what it's worth, yes. This would be a lot easier if Lina were able to pitch in, though." 

"You sound like you're saying she's more powerful than you are." 

Luna shrugged. "Trying to figure that out is like comparing apples and coconuts. I'm not really a sorceress. To the extent I can channel my power, I do it instinctively, like a Mazoku would. Ironically enough. That means that some of the things Lina can do are beyond my ability. I couldn't pull the Lord of Nightmares into this world, for instance. I wouldn't even know where to start. But in a normal fight, where she was alone and not resorting to insane measures, I'd probably win—because I can hit faster, and keep it up for longer. So she doesn't dare start anything." 

"She must hate that, too." Affectionate behaviour for Lina tended to involve headlocks, punches, and/or fireballs at close range. She couldn't really damage me, and Ame had never been her preferred target, but I wondered sometimes how Gourry survived. 

"Oh, she does." Luna shook her head. "Would it surprise you to know that I envy her?" 

I turned that over in my head. Seyruun's intelligence service kept tabs on the Knight of Ceiphied as a matter of course, so I knew quite a bit about Luna: age forty-five although she didn't look it, never married, had gone from waitress to assistant manager to owner of her small cafe. And then there was Lina: famous (or possibly infamous) bandit-hunting and world-saving sorceress, currently honorary mage-advisor to the throne of Taforashia, happily married and with her first child on the way. 

"She has her own nightmares, you know," I said. I knew about some of them, from the days when we'd sometimes been forced to all share an inn room. Lina and I both had a way of waking up in the middle of the night, and she'd once tried to convince me to talk about my bad dreams by unveiling some of hers. The Giga-Slave and the end of the world. It made me feel a bit embarrassed, really, that all my nightmares were about Rezo, or, later, about losing Ame. Human-scale tragedies, not god-scale ones. 

"I do know," Luna said. "She came home for a little while, before the wedding. I ran into her and Gourry in the middle of the night in the kitchen once, just cuddling. She had tear-streaks all up and down her face. It made me feel . . ." She broke off in mid-sentence, and sighed. "I always thought I'd be married by now, with at least a couple of kids, but . . ." 

"You've never found him," I said, understanding. 

"Him, her, I don't really care about that part. But someone . . ." Another sigh. "They're all either overbearing jerks, or once they find out what I am—a cafe manager with the prospective lifespan of an advanced sorceress who's a target of opportunity for any Mazoku passing through, for Ceiphied's sake!—they get as far away as they can, as fast as they can. And Lina didn't even have to look—Gourry found her! How could I not be jealous? All I have is Spot, and I know he's . . ." 

"Broken," I said quietly. "I doubt that was even your fault. Troll mixes don't heal as perfectly as pure trolls, so when he came back to life after we beat on him, he . . . well, there might have been some brain damage. He's certainly not what he was back in the days when he worked for me." 

"He doesn't talk about his past." 

"That might be just as well. We all did some things we weren't all that proud of, back then. Maybe even including Lina—or at least, I _hope_ she's not proud of some of it." I was thinking of the Femille incident, but the preceding bit with the lost festival dances probably loomed larger in Lina's memory. It hadn't been that much fun for me, either, and I'd only been the prompter. Femille had just been worse. 

"I wonder if that includes the Chaos Dragon." 

I shrugged. "Even if it does, I don't think he'd discuss it with me. But I doubt it. Even at the time, he said he was fighting for survival. It's kind of hard to feel guilty about that. And even trying to talk about it would open up a can of worms bigger than the palace." 

"Mmm." 

"Does it make you uncomfortable, knowing that we have a Mazoku among our allies?" I dared to ask. 

"Not as much as I would have expected it to. I can feel a . . . sort of discomfort . . . in the part of me that's Ceiphied whenever he's nearby, but it isn't too bad, and he's less annoying, overall, than I would have thought he'd be. It's a shame about Val, though. There was a point where, for about thirty seconds, I thought I'd found a good one, and then he turns out to be gay _and_ taken." Luna smiled and shook her head. "They're cute together, though, in a really weird sort of way. I mean, when you think about it, it should be one of the greatest romances in history—the tragic forbidden love between a Dark Lord and a dragon! If you put that on a book cover . . . well, _I'd_ buy it, anyway. But Gaav gives me all the romantic vibes of a . . . a . . ." 

"A fungal infection?" I suggested, reflecting that Ame would probably buy that book too, _if_ they didn't put Gaav's picture on the cover. 

The Knight of Ceiphied laughed. "Not quite _that_ bad, thankfully! A pair of old boots, maybe, like the ones Dad wears when he's doing yardwork. Mom makes him keep them out in the shed. But he . . . You have the oddest expression on your face, Zelgadis-san. Is this conversation getting too girly for you?" 

"I'm kind of used to it," I said. "My wife . . . reads those kinds of books too. I'm just imagining what kind of look Gaav would have on his face when he found out about it. And what he'd say about it." 

"He'd probably exhaust the entire peninsula's supply of four-letter words for a month," Luna agreed with a grin. 

A loud sneeze and a curse in a familiar gravelly voice came from below in the garden, followed by, "Chimera, if you've got enough spare time to talk about me behind my back, you've got enough time to get your ass down here and welcome your new guests." 

"I'm still holding out for 'fungal infection'," I muttered, making Luna laugh again. 

New guests. Right. The words did _nothing_ to prepare me for what was waiting for me downstairs. 

I'd seen fourteen golden dragons in one place before a couple of times, just not milling around the largest sitting room in the palace. Although come to think of it, I'd never seen this many together before in human form. Well, mostly human form. A lot of them had tails sticking out, and a couple were trying not to bang into things with their wings. And in the middle of the chaos stood one unexpectedly familiar figure. I blinked, but he didn't disappear. 

"Milgazia-san?" 

"You were one of Lina Inverse's companions . . . Zelgadis Greywords?" the golden dragon said, coming forward. "I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you again, but it appears we are in straits just as dire as the last time we met." 

"Unfortunately," I agreed. "Are these . . . all the dragons?" 

"If you're asking if they are all that will be coming, the answer is no—black dragons cannot take human form, and apparently eight of them were too much for young Val to transport on his own. He's returned to Dragon's Peak with . . . his mate . . . so that the two of them can work together to teleport them to the space you have set up for them. For which I offer my thanks," Milgazia added. 

"You're welcome," said a cheerful voice by my elbow. "It's good to see you again, Milgazia-san." 

"Princess Amelia," Milgazia greeted my wife. And Damien was talking to a couple of the other dragons and pretending not to stare at their tails and wings. 

"Just Amelia," my wife corrected. "After all, we're old friends, aren't we? I wish we'd met again under better circumstances." 

"As do I," Milgazia said. "I had hoped never to lead my people into battle again . . . much less under the command of a Mazoku." 

"Gaav isn't so bad," Ame said. 

"Compared to Xellos, anyway," I added. "At least he seems willing to take his meals where he can find them, instead of going around finding ways to provoke people." 

"It still makes me feel as though someone decided to flip the world upside down," Milgazia muttered. Then, "Is she here? Lina Inverse?" 

"She went to bed early because of the baby, or I'm sure she and Gourry would be here to say hello." Ame smiled—thinking of babies, maybe. I don't know. 

The golden dragon shook his head. "She truly does defy all probabilities, that one. Only one of the pieces of Shabranigdo arose in the entire four thousand years before she was born . . . and now two of them have shown themselves in the span of one human lifetime. It beggars belief." 

"We're hoping that she won't be a major part of things this time," I said. "We don't want her to lose the baby." 

Milgazia raised an eyebrow that was almost as shaggy as Gaav's. "She already has been a major part of things. After all, how many of those involved in this would have met without her? She's the linchpin of . . . something." 

Amelia giggled . . . and I had to admit that the verbal anticlimax was enough to make me smile, too. 

There was a brief sizzling hum, and suddenly there was a massive dark aura in the room. I could almost see the three dragon heads hovering above the larger of the two figures who had just now arrived. All conversations in the room stopped abruptly as pale-faced golden dragons turned to look at the new arrivals. I was watching Milgazia instead, and saw the tiniest of shivers run through him. Meanwhile, the brau demon part of me was hiding at the back of my mind and whimpering. _Dear Ceiphied, make it stop . . ._

Gaav's aura pulled in on itself after a moment, giving everyone else room to breathe. "That's just a taste of what you'll probably be experiencing at Wolf Pack Island," he said without preamble, his expression hard. "If you don't think you can handle hours of that and worse, then go home, because you'll be fucking useless during the fighting. I don't have time to coddle a bunch of hatchlings." 

No one moved. 

"Fine, then," the Chaos Dragon said. "For your information, that was your last chance to back out, and none of you took it. So you're all part of this for the duration, even if I have to slap mind-control spells on you. You all know who I am, so you shouldn't be stupid enough to doubt that I'll do it. Of course, if you're that dumb, I doubt I'll have to worry about you much longer anyway." He smirked for a moment before his expression went hard again. "This isn't a game. Some of you won't be coming back. And only one of you really understands what that means. Listen to him. You'll hear more about exactly what you're going to be doing tomorrow. For now, if any of you have any _intelligent_ questions, you've got thirty seconds to ask them in." 

Milgazia was the only one who dared to speak. "Val indicated that we would not be confronting Zelas or Xellos ourselves. Is that much of your plan still unchanged?" 

Gaav snorted. "No, that part hasn't changed—the wolf-bitch and the slimy little cone are our problem, not yours. I don't believe in throwing away perfectly good dragons, as Val may have told you. Anyone else?" 

I was tempted to ask _Where do you expect us to find bedrooms for this many people on such short notice?_ but I was pretty sure the answer would be a smirk and something like, _Improvise_. And the truth was that we did have enough guest bedrooms. They weren't all kept made up and ready for use, though, which meant waking some of the maids to take the dust covers off the furniture and put sheets on the beds, and the housekeeper would be annoyed because the maids' contracts dictated that they would be paid double if roused to work after hours, which bit into her budget. Which meant I was going to get an earful. I sighed. 

"No one?" Gaav was saying. "Get some sleep, then, all of you. You're going to need all your strength tomorrow." 

With that, he and Val vanished again, but it took a couple of minutes before the tension in the room eased enough that anyone would speak. 

Milgazia, I noted, had an odd smile on his face that made him look as though he had a toothache. 

"Something on your mind?" I asked him. 

The golden dragon shook his head. "I was just remembering my commander from the days of the Kouma War. A stubborn old dragon who had been involved in more than half the skirmishes of the thousand years proceeding, one way or another. No one liked him very much, but he was certainly respected. I never expected that I would hear the echo of his voice in Maryuu-oh Gaav's, of all people. It should be offensive, but instead I feel . . . oddly reassured. I even find myself wanting to trust him." 

I shrugged. "For a Mazoku, Gaav's pretty straightforward, but I'm not sure actually _trusting_ him is safe. He might share some of our goals, but . . ." 

"But," Milgazia agreed, and sighed. "Nevertheless, I'm starting to believe that we might actually pull this off." 

"I hope so," I said. 

_Because if we don't, I have no idea what to do next, and I don't think Gaav does either._


	32. Filia

I shifted restlessly, letting my tail flick back and forth. "How much longer?" 

"Just a few minutes, I think," said the weight on my back. It had been a long time since I'd last carried a rider. Fortunately, Luna Inverse wasn't very heavy. 

Gaav hadn't been very happy at all when the Knight of Ceiphied had announced that she was coming to Wolf Pack Island with us. To say the least. There had been a nasty moment when his eyes had started to glow red, and we'd all braced ourselves in case he decided to level the palace, or maybe the whole city. The glow had faded a moment later, though, and he'd just told her to stay out of the way, then vanished with Val. I'd been too busy being relieved to even worry about what they were doing alone together. 

And so now I was standing near the edge of a . . . well, I suppose you could have called it a pasture if you were feeling generous or had livestock that liked crabgrass . . . In any case, I'd joined the two dozen or so other dragons preparing for the attack on Wolf Pack Island. I was the only female golden dragon present, and somehow all the others here (except Milgazia) looked very young to me. I was fairly certain it had more to do with their attitudes than their actual ages, though. Chances were that none of them had ever been in a real fight, or seen anyone die. 

I'd never thought I'd be grateful to have been involved in the Dark Star Incident. Actually, I wasn't sure that _grateful_ was quite the word for what I was feeling right now. Was having this cold feeling in the pit of my stomach really a good thing? I was fairly certain I would have been happier if I'd had no idea what might end up being in store for us once we reached the island. Ignorance might be bliss, but was it _right_? 

Another thought crossed my mind, and I . . . sort of twitched, I guess. _I think this is what Val was trying to tell me. You'd think I could have figured it out before now. Stupid, stupid, stupid . . ._

"What's eating you?" Luna asked irritably from the safety of my back. I was saved from having to answer by the appearance of two new figures at the edge of our group. I think they might have been in their human forms in the instant when they first teleported in, but both Val and Gaav immediately transformed. I'd seen Val's true form before, of course, but he held himself differently now, as though . . . more deeply centered. Those were the only words I could find. Gaav towered beside him, large as a dimos, with his heads all looking in different directions. I couldn't figure out how he made sense of what he saw. Probably it was a Mazoku thing, which meant that I had no interest in investigating further. 

"The nearest land to Wolf Pack Island is a peninsula at the edge of the Desert of Destruction," the central head said without preamble. "When you come out of the teleport, launch and head west. It's about half an hour's flight. You'll sense the island before you see it. Stay in formation, and remember your instructions, or I'll fucking well make you wish you did." 

Not exactly an inspirational speech, but most of the young dragons around me didn't seem to care. Val trusted Gaav absolutely, so he didn't need one either. Milgazia and Luna and I were probably the only worried ones, and a speech wasn't likely to fix much there. 

The world blinked, and suddenly it was a lot hotter and drier, although I could also smell the ocean somewhere not too far away. I shook my head. Teleporting short distances under my own power was one thing, but this instantaneous long-distance movement was jarring. Except that it once again looked as though I was the only one bothered by it. 

Gaav launched immediately. There was no one else who knew exactly where to find our destination, so he had to lead the way. Several of the young dragons followed him, and Milgazia urged the others forward. Val lurked at the back, keeping an eye on everyone. 

And then Milgazia launched, and Val and Luna and I were alone at the edge of a cliff above a pebble beach. 

"Get moving," my ex-foster-son said, jerking his head in the direction of the cliff's edge. 

"Val, I—" 

"Get. Moving. If you have something to say to me, say it while we're in the air. I don't think you quite understand what my job is in all this," he added. "I'm Gaav's second-in-command, and I have a responsibility to keep things moving smoothly. That means no stragglers. Now, launch yourself before I push you over the cliff." 

"You wouldn't." 

He sighed. "You're still so naive. _Of course_ I would. I don't have time to be gentle with you, Filia-san . . . and you really don't need me to be, anyway. Now go." 

His expression was implacable, so I spread my wings and jumped. _I don't need your gentleness? How do you know? And . . . what if I want it?_

I sighed into the wind. 

"Copper for your thoughts?" Luna asked from on top of my back. 

"I'm just . . . confused," I admitted, with a grimace that I doubt anyone saw. "I don't like him treating me like . . . like an acquaintance, but he won't let me get any closer." 

"He isn't treating you like an acquaintance," Luna corrected. "Even just now—if you'd been one of those kids out ahead of us, he'd just have pushed you off the cliff without stopping to talk. The problem is that you have no idea how to relate to him when he's in the stronger position, but not an enemy. You've got to get over the idea that you're his mother—sorry, but there's no other way of putting it. Now that he's got his memory back, he must remember his real parents." 

"I'm not sure how well he knew them. Jillas once said that Valgaav had told him he'd lost his mother while he was still very young, and he's never mentioned his father to anyone." Except, possibly, Gaav, but I wasn't about to ask a Dark Lord such an intimate question about my foster-son. 

"Ask him, then, why don't you? It should give you something to talk about that doesn't touch on the really difficult topics. You're not going to be able to establish a new relationship if you never spend any time together, and it isn't as though he hates you. Although, really, I'm not sure that he ever did." 

I shook my head. "I think that, as Valgaav, he mostly saw me as irritatingly naive. Not important enough to hate." Even during the most horrible of our interactions, with his hands forcing mine to stay clamped around the haft of one of the Dark Star Weapons as he pushed it downward toward the spell formation that would open the gate to the Overworld and told me he would make me end the world with my own hands . . . there had been something weirdly impersonal about that. He had been angry, he had been full of hatred, but none of it had been aimed at _me_ , exactly. To him, I'd been a symbol representing the golden dragon race, not a specific person named Filia Ul Copt. And I'd felt sorry for him. I'd _pitied_ him. 

Had I unintentionally carried those old feelings forward and let them taint my perceptions of Val as a hatchling? The idea that I'd been the one sabotaging our relationship, even before he'd run away from home . . . that hurt. That really hurt. 

But the new Val wasn't really Valgaav or the confused and angry fledgling who had fled Sandy Point. Actually, he seemed to be less angry now than I could ever remember him being. He'd discarded any remaining vengeful desires he might have had as impossible to fulfill, and was happy in his relationship with Gaav and his place at the Dark Lord's side. As far as I could tell, anyway. 

The problem was that there was no room for _me_ in that, and I was . . . jealous. Of that big bastard with the red hair. Not that I wanted Val _that_ way, or at least I didn't think I ever had. 

"I'd offer you another copper for what you're thinking now, but if I keep paying you, you're going to bankrupt me, and as an Inverse, I couldn't stand for that," Luna said. 

"I was just thinking that I can't wait to get this over with," I lied. 

"And that makes you blush? It's interesting, you know—you go pink and orange. Sort of like a sunrise." 

"I think I'm starting to understand why Lina hates you," I grumbled. "You've got even less tact then Gaav." Just then, I'd rather have had Lina on my back dangling a carrot in front of my nose. 

"I tailor my methods to the target, and right now what you need is a little tough love. You're moping around and feeling sorry for yourself and the only reason no one's called you on it yet is that they all have more important things on their minds. Me, though . . . I'm kind of surplus to requirements right now, so I have the time to sort out a teenaged mother who has no idea how to deal with the fact that her son's grown up." 

"You mean that you're picking me apart to keep yourself from having time to be frightened," I said. "Well, I don't like it!" 

"Of course I'm frightened," Luna said. "I've never been in a pitched battle before, and all my fighting skills are rusty. I could get killed here. Fighting alongside a renegade Dark Lord. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be? But under the circumstances, it's this or nothing. If I just let them go without keeping an eye on them, Gaav might end up joining forces with the other Mazoku after all, and then we'll be in real trouble—even if we don't lose the world, I'll probably lose my niece." 

"Gaav won't do that. Val won't let him." And he loved Val too much to ever hurt him. Even I could see that. 

Luna shifted on my back. "I suppose it makes sense that you would trust them, but I can't afford to. I get the feeling that Gaav's up to something that he hasn't discussed with the rest of us." 

"And you think that 'something' is switching sides? Really, Luna-san . . ." 

"I don't know. And until I do know, I don't dare take my eyes off him." 

I didn't know quite how to respond to that. As a result, we flew the rest of the way to the island in silence, with my thoughts swirling around in circles inside my head, did-I-could-I-should-I chasing each other's tails in an endless spiral. 

After twenty minutes or so of flying, Gaav, Val, and Milgazia began to dress the ranks, dividing us into two groups. I was with the second, larger one, under Milgazia's leadership—Luna and I were to serve jointly as his second-in-command, Ceiphied help us. The rest of the group was mostly young goldens, with a couple of blacks to provide physical protection if needed. The other formation, under Gaav and Val, had mostly blacks. I didn't understand the logic of that, but then I wasn't a military strategist. 

The island itself was shaped like a crude dough version of a Z, rounded and lumpy. Most of its surface was forested, making it difficult to see details of what might be down there, but I could tell there were Mazoku around. The whole island stank of them. 

Our group was to skim low over the southern half of the island and "blast at anything that moves", to quote Val, while Gaav's group was to land near the midpoint and do . . . something. We were supposed to ground beside them eventually, but only after we'd done at least three passes. 

At least bombing the island from the sky gave me a chance to take out my frustrations on something. I amplified my natural breath weapon with muttered spells and watched it slice through the trees, pretending they were Xellos' face. There was nothing complicated about wishing harm on the garbage Mazoku, and it didn't require me to sort out any feelings. The sound of howling wolves drifted up faintly from among the trees. 

The forest didn't burn very well, unfortunately, even with fire breath from the blacks augmenting our Laser Breath. I suppose the vegetation was just too green. We did leave it looking satisfyingly scorched, though. 

It was while we were on our third pass that things suddenly got too quiet, and a much stronger sense of Mazokuness seemed to fill the area. A stronger, _familiar_ sense of Mazokuness. 

"Oh, dear," sighed a familiar voice from the empty air. Then there was a black crackle, and Xellos appeared, floating, his staff casually dangling from one hand. "Really, Filia, are you so angry at me that you need to make a mess of my home? Such a huge risk, all for nothing?" His eyes slid open. "Beastmaster-sama is not pleased. At all. And there are others who will be equally displeased that I was called away from my current business." 

"Did you really think we'd let you start another Kouma War?" Milgazia asked. I'd never heard him sound like this before, harsh and cold. So much for his nickname of "Pleasant Milgazia". 

Xellos smiled. With his eyes open, it was a chilling expression. "Really, do you think _you_ can stop me?" 

"Why not?" Luna said, unsheathing her kitchen knife. Despite being offered the run of Seyruun's royal armoury, she'd opted to stick with the commonplace not-a-weapon, saying that it was far more familiar than the swords she hadn't handled since she was a little girl. Nor had she accepted any armour. Really, I'd been half-surprised this morning when she'd turned up in trousers instead of her waitress outfit. White light was flaring around her now, and I felt a warmth against my back that had to be an echo of Ceiphied's power as she rose to her feet, balanced between my wings. 

"My, my. Should I be flattered that the Knight of Ceiphied has come for me in person?" 

"I don't care how you feel," Luna said. And threw herself from my back. 

" _Luna-san!_ " Because I wasn't expecting her to do something so obviously insane, it took me a moment to dive after her. I was skimming the trees before I understood what had happened—Luna had jumped, not into thin air, but at Xellos, and the two of them were now grappling fifty feet above me. Luna had plunged her knife into his thigh, and Xellos was trying to . . . Actually, I wasn't quite sure what he was trying to do. The expression on his face as he beat Luna about the head and shoulders with his staff was a twisted grimace the likes of which I'd never seen from him before. 

Luna was laughing as she pulled her knife out of Xellos, and sporting a crazy, feral grin that reminded me of an angry Lina. The Mazoku bled a sullen black, the crackling droplets coming thicker as he tried to kick his opponent with his injured leg. He'd never bled when he was injured before, and I wasn't sure what it meant, but it probably wasn't good. For him. I was even less sure of what it meant for our side. 

There was a twisting feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched them. I couldn't _quite_ say that I didn't know which one I wanted to win, but seeing the garbage Mazoku in this much trouble bothered me more than I had expected. I hated Xellos, but . . . not like that. Not enough to kill him. 

The next moment, Xellos succeeded in landing a solid kick just as Luna drew her arm back for another stab, and sent Luna shooting away from him at an angle. I beat my wings furiously, but I didn't have enough altitude, and I knew I wasn't going to be in time. Luna was going to pancake on the ground, or be skewered on a tree, and it would all be my fault because I hadn't . . . hadn't come up under the two of them and let them finish their fight on my back. _Oh, Ceiphied, what am I thinking?_

About ten feet above the trees, there was a sudden flicker, and a long arm wrapped in a blue coat sleeve arrested Luna's fall, swung her around, and threw her back toward me. I backwinged, raising my body to the vertical so that I could catch her with my foretalons. Gaav's aim was precise, to say the least, because Luna smacked right up against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her before she could bounce. 

Meanwhile, Xellos had turned to face Gaav. His expression had smoothed back into something like his normal smile, but his eyes were still wide open. The Dark Lord, in the meanwhile, was smirking, with his sword propped casually against his shoulder. 

"Doesn't feel so great to be trapped on the physical, does it?" Gaav rumbled. 

"Indeed," Xellos said. "I wasn't even aware that such a thing was within the Knight of Ceiphied's power. I can't understand how you've endured it so well all these years, Gaav-don— _Ugh!_ " He folded over as Gaav's knee collided with his stomach. 

"That's _still_ 'Gaav- _sama_ ' to you, you mangy little fucker. Since this is the _second_ time you've forgotten that while you were actually _talking_ to me, I'm going to engrave it into your fucking hide, so that it can't slip your memory ever again." The Dark Lord flickered out, then back into view beside Xellos, and kicked him in the side of the head. Then his massive sword swung down. Xellos tried to block the blow with his staff. I heard the sound of cracking wood, and Xellos shot downwards like a meteorite, nearly impaling himself on a tree. He'd saved himself from being cut open, but his staff had broken in two, leaving him with a piece in either hand as Gaav barreled down on him from above. 

Xellos jerked into flight, backing away at high speed as a group of black cones began to form up around him. He shot them at Gaav, who parried every single one with a series of quick sword slashes. Xellos ducked another blow, and then the fight degenerated into a series of blurry flickers, making it impossible to tell what was going on for ten or fifteen seconds. Then there was a downwards blur, ending with a _crumph_ and a shockwave that lifted my wings. A fountain of dirt and bits of vegetation burst from the forest. 

"Down!" Luna told me, or more like _ordered_ me, but I didn't care—she wasn't the only one who wanted to see what had happened. And so I flew cautiously down in wide circles through the dust, ready to teleport us out of danger if it became necessary. I was feeling that twisting in the pit of my stomach again. Was Xellos still alive? I didn't expect him to be alright, but . . . 

I landed awkwardly on the edge of the crater, a mess of disturbed soil and broken vegetation that included some good-sized tree trunks, and set my passenger down. I couldn't see ten feet in front of my nose. There had to be some way to clear the air . . . My mastery of air shamanism had never been that great, so it took me a moment to come up with the right spell. 

"Diem wind!" 

The gust of wind whipped the cloud of dirt away, revealing Xellos lying on his back at the middle of a crater while Gaav knelt on his chest. A bit of black trickled from the corner of the Trickster Priest's mouth, but he wasn't dead, his arms moving weakly as he tried to push the larger Mazoku away. Beyond them, I could see what had been a battle in a clearing, but both sides of the fight—dragons and giant wolf-shaped Mazoku—had stopped in mid-motion and were staring. 

_Something's wrong._ Just a niggling little feeling, that grew stronger as I looked around. 

"Where's Val?" I asked out loud, meaning to direct the question at Luna. 

"Yes, where is your dear little dragon?" Xellos said, smiling. 

Gaav smiled right back. It wasn't a pleasant expression. "You should have thought about that before you decided to tangle with the rest of us, now, shouldn't you? He's busy. That's all you need to know. I'll keep an eye on you until he's done, so that he can have the chance to kick you around a bit—he's still pretty pissed off at you." 

Busy? How, if he wasn't involved in the fighting? 

"Beastmaster isn't here either," Luna muttered. "The big lunk couldn't have sent his boyfriend to negotiate for him, could he? Oh, hell. I really screwed up this time." 

Negotiate? That wasn't really one of Val's better skills. He was probably going to . . . _oh, no_ . . . 

Swallowing hard, I turned to face the end of the island where Gaav had said Zelas' base was. 

I could only hope that Val was going to come out of this alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xellos not using the right honourific for Gaav is canon, in Next, although you have to be paying attention to the spoken Japanese dialogue to realize that that's what's going on.


	33. Val

I tore the throat out of one of the wolf-Mazoku and deliberately changed over to my human form as it fell. Everyone was occupied with their own enemies and paying no attention to me. Good. It looked like this part of the plan was working as expected. 

Teleporting blind into a location where I'd never been before isn't one of my favourite things, but Gaav had been the one to give me that location, so I had every reason to believe it was good . . . or at least free of rockfaces or large trees. I gritted my teeth and folded space, and popped out onto a sunny balcony. At least eight alarms went off in the next second. They were silent, but I could feel the pulse of Mazoku energies all around me, filling the area with the not-smell of wet wolf. 

I folded my arms and leaned back against a brass-washed railing wrought in the form of a vine. There couldn't be many defenders left here, and Gaav had said that when Zelas realized that none of her subordinates could take me, she would most likely come out herself. 

It would have been much easier if we'd been able to approach her openly, but there was a long list of people that we needed to fake out, beginning with the Shard of Shabranigdo and ending with Luna Inverse, who had a deep-down hatred of Mazoku that she controlled but couldn't hide, at least not from Gaav. And so I was stuck on a too-fancy marble balcony overlooking the ocean while the fighting went on elsewhere. Damn it all. I like fighting, at least when I have some chance of winning. Not a guarantee, mind you—there's no fun in that. But like Gaav, I loved the contest, and the heady feeling of beating someone who was actually _worthy_. 

"Valgaav." 

She approached from the shadows beyond the open archway that led inside her stronghold. I'd met her only once before, at a negotiation she and Gaav had undertaken centuries ago, and I was fairly certain she hadn't walked that way then, with her hips swaying so that the slit in her skirt showed a brief flash of thigh with every step. And I was pretty sure she'd had short blonde hair that time, and a more athletic look. Now she had silver hair that fell past her shoulders. Her smile hadn't changed, though. There was still a kind of irony to it, a secret pleasure that she would never admit to or explain. 

"Zelas-dono," I greeted her, and she checked her stride and raised her eyebrows. 

"Does my brother permit you such disrespect?" 

I smirked. "Gaav lets me call him by his unadorned name. He is my mate, after all. Sister-in-law." 

She chuckled, a low, rich sound. "Do you really believe that?" 

"I have one end of the bond in my head, so there's no _belief_ required." 

"Do you honestly think he couldn't counterfeit that, if he chose?" 

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter, because he _wouldn't_ choose. If all he wanted was my loyalty, he wouldn't have needed to go to such lengths." 

"Hmm." She circled me slowly, walking straight through the railing, and then a marble pillar, in order to do it. I stayed where I was, pretending I couldn't feel the scales at the back of my neck hackling. On the astral, she was massive, a dragon-sized winged wolf with glowing eyes, immensely dense and powerful. As strong as Gaav, but she didn't project the warmth and reassurance I always got from him. "You are the oddest dragon I've ever come across. Stronger than my Xellos, despite you being bound to that flesh. Now I wish I'd taken a closer look at you the last time we met. I assume you have some sort of message from my brother." 

"It's more of an offer, really." 

"Go on." 

"The short version is, we'll get rid of the Shard of Shabranigdo for you if you do us one favour." 

Zelas laughed, and I braced myself to fight my way back out. We'd known this was a gamble, but Gaav had considered it our best chance. Zelas wasn't particularly fond of being Ruby-Eye's lackey either. 

"That's very blunt," she said, with a wide grin that was more of a baring of teeth—an expression that didn't match at all well with her current form. 

I shrugged. "I didn't think that dressing it up and tying a ribbon around it would make you more likely to accept. I mean, I could go away, rewrite it as a hundred lines of iambic pentameter, and come back, but it would waste time, and I was never much good at poetry anyway." 

I really hoped she wouldn't take me up on it. Especially since I couldn't remember the difference between iambic and trochaic pentameter. I hadn't been listening very hard that day in school. 

"Oh, dear," she said, and her bared teeth became a real smile. "What _would_ you rhyme with 'Shabranigdo'?" 

"'Fatal blow'?" I suggested. "'Eternal foe'? 'Let hatred grow'?" 

"Direct. But not inappropriate. Perhaps I _should_ ask you to go back and turn your proposal into a poem." She tapped her lower lip with one manicured finger. "Or perhaps I'll leave that for Xellos, the next time I need to send someone an ultimatum. It _is_ an interesting idea, though. Very disconcerting for the recipient." 

I waited, wishing that I knew whether she was really considering what I said, or just stringing me along. She could taste my nervousness and irritation, I knew. Which irritated me even more, but what could I do about it? Being stronger than Xellos didn't make me as strong as _her_. If she did turn on me and I had to fight her, I would launch straight off the balcony and try to lead her back towards Gaav while doing my best to defend myself. "Winning", in such an unequal combat, meant getting away in one piece. Knowing I didn't measure up was another thing that pissed me off. 

"What does your mate say about me?" she asked suddenly. "In general terms, I mean. I'm certain it's come up over the years." 

"That of all his brothers and sisters, you're his favourite." _Not that that's fucking hard,_ Gaav's voice added in my memory, but I wasn't going to say that. 

A low, warm chuckle. "Considering the competition, I'm not surprised." 

More waiting for her to say something. One thing you learn to do if you belong to the long-lived races is wait. I'd never enjoyed it, but over the centuries, I'd learned to handle it. 

_Zelas is the opposite of me in many ways,_ Gaav had warned me. _She likes subtlety, and she'll beat around in the bush and waste time just for the sake of winding you up. Don't let her get to you._

"You're worthy of him, you know." 

I felt my face get hot. Hearing it from a third party was different from hearing it from Gaav himself . . . because if Zelas was biased, it was probably against me. 

"But I wonder if you've noticed . . . there are traces of energy on a very low level of the astral that bind you to something else. Three or four of them. They're weaker than your mate-bond, but they may not stay that way. And I can't tell what's at the other end." 

_What the hell?_ If that was true, then . . . what? I didn't get it. File it away for Gaav and I to pick at later. Truth or lie, it wasn't urgent. Time to move the things that were along a bit. 

"Is the extra information supposed to make us trust you more, or just feel better when you refuse our offer?" I asked. 

"Oh, there was never any question of my refusing, little brother-in-law. Gaav knew that, I'm sure. Unlike Phibby, he understands independence and why one would want it. The extra information . . . well, I find the circumstance involved curious, but it isn't practical for me to investigate it myself. I'd like to know what you find." 

"A trade, then?" I wanted to be sure I understood what she was offering. You had to be careful, with Mazoku. 

"Two trades," Zelas agreed, dipping her head. "Your information on this . . . peculiarity . . . for the information that it exists in the first place, and the action you request of me in return for getting rid of the Shard. What do you need me to do?" 

"We need you to get the Shard to a specific place, somewhere in a time window of several days." 

"Oh? Where and when?" 

I gave her a location in the middle of Seyruun. The country, that is, not the city. Zelas raised her eyebrows, suggesting that maybe she knew what had once been there, even though Gaav had said that she hadn't spent much time in the area before the Kouma War. 

"The time window starts three days from now. You can get him there a bit later, but for Ceiphied's sake don't let him show up earlier, or we're in trouble." That last bit was actually a lie—we could probably scramble something together in a hurry if we had to. I wondered if Zelas could tell. "Can you do it?" 

"If he knows your mate will be there, he'll go regardless of what I say. He's given us exactly two orders: _Lay low and don't start anything_ , and _find Gaav_. He seems to think that your mate can be persuaded to return to the fold." A derisive laugh showed that she agreed with me on the likelihood of that. But at the same time, a slight chill touched the nape of my neck and made my scales hackle, over on the astral. 

Would Gaav's changed nature be enough to shield him in a confrontation with Ruby-Eye? Even he didn't know for sure. I couldn't claim to entirely understand the bond between parent and child Mazoku—even when I'd had Gaav's power in me, I'd been different—but I knew it could be nasty when used against you. 

"We'll need a communication channel in case there's a change of plans," Zelas was saying. 

"Send Xellos to visit Filia," I suggested. "Since I'm sure the Mazoku population at large knows about their . . . relationship . . . it shouldn't strike the Shard as unusual." I wondered if even the two people involved would be able to say what that relationship was, though. I also wondered whether Filia would understand I had suggested her involvement because I thought she was reliable, or just be ticked off because she thought I was using her. Sometimes it was as though she couldn't see what was right in front of her nose. It frustrated me, and it made our already complicated relationship even more complicated. 

I didn't know if I was ever going to get that sorted out, and I couldn't afford to think about it right now. Not while I was facing the Beastmaster, who was currently tilting her head to one side. 

"Not a bad idea," she admitted. "But if not that, I'll come up with something else." 

"I should be going before someone notices I'm here." 

The Dark Lord nodded. "Good luck, little brother-in-law. Say hello to Gaav for me." 

Her projection vanished, withdrawn into the astral, and I saw the giant wolf there wriggle a bit and wander off. Audience at an end, then. I folded space and punched myself through, back to the battlefield. 

Except that there wasn't much battling going on anymore. Both sides were arranged around the edges of a crater, staring down into the interior, where Gaav had planted himself firmly on top of Xellos. My mate's head rose immediately as I appeared, and he looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I nodded, and the grin he was already sporting widened. 

"So that's that," he said. "Want a punching bag, Val? Been keeping this one warm for you." 

We would need to work with Xellos, but he was bound to his mistress' wishes, and we needed to put on a good show for anyone else who might be watching. "Why not? Are you going to clean up the rabble while I play with him?" 

"That was the idea." Gaav stood up, lifting Xellos by the collar of his shirt. He bounced the smaller Mazoku a bit, as though weighing him, then threw him in my direction. As usual, the throw was accurate, allowing me to grab Xellos by the collar myself and hoist him again just before he reached the bottom point of his arc. 

"Why, hello, Valgaav," he said, pulling ineffectually at my one hand with both of his, trying to work himself loose. "I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you again, but this little incident has been . . . most annoying." His eyes opened on the last two words, and his tone shifted from bantering to sharp, but he'd lost the ability to intimidate me long ago. 

A sizzling noise made me glance down, and I raised my eyebrows as I saw black dripping down his leg. "You're bleeding. I didn't know that was possible." 

"Yes, well, neither did I, but the Knight of Ceiphied's little present to me seems to have a wide variety of interesting consequences." 

I examined him more closely. And the more I understood of what had happened to him, the more broadly I found myself grinning. 

"You're stuck here. On the physical. No wonder you're so pissed off. I'd bet you can even feel physical pain for the first time in your existence." Astral pain, I'd discovered in the old days when Gaav and I and all his followers were being hunted from pillar to post, was a different sensation from physical pain, more like having portions of your mind eroded. 

"It's quite a novel sensation," Xellos admitted. 

"Glad you're enjoying it." 

"Well, I wouldn't quite say tha—" The word became more of a yelp when I squeezed his injured leg with my free hand. I was tempted to lick the black "blood" off it afterwards, but I might have caught something from it, so I wiped it on his trouser leg instead. 

"Now you know how I felt that time you ground that stupid fucking staff of yours into my hand," I growled. "Want me to give you another sample? How it feels to have Lina Inverse slam a Dragon Slave directly into your body, maybe?" In the background, Gaav was clearing the area of Mazoku-wolf-creatures, killing some while allowing others to drop back into the astral and run. Putting on a good show while not alienating Zelas unnecessarily by slaughtering all of her cannon fodder. 

"Oh, no, that's quite alright! I'll have a great deal more respect for physical pain from now on," Xellos promised earnestly. I couldn't even claim it was a lie, since it was quite possible to respect physical pain even as you inflicted it. 

I couldn't kill him, unfortunately, or even beat him up too much. That would send our agreement with Zelas spiralling straight down the drain. Even now, we were at risk of him trying to find some way to take revenge that remained within the letter of his orders. 

And so I threw him down and kicked him a couple of times. "Too bad we have to get out of here before your mistress summons help from her brother and sister, or I'd give you a little taste of what it feels like to be hunted by dozens of enemies." 

"Better stay out of our way from now on," Gaav added over my shoulder, having finished with the lesser Mazoku. It was a nicely ambiguous comment: everyone else would think he was annoyed at Xellos, not trying to avoid having anyone figure out there was a link between us and the Beastmaster. 

"I certainly will." Xellos . . . tried to flick into the astral, I think, but he failed. "I do hope this wears off." 

"When the wound heals," Luna said, with a Lina-like grin. 

Xellos inclined his head gravely. "It seems that I have underestimated your power. I won't do so again." 

"If you say so," the Knight of Ceiphied replied. 

Gaav had an odd expression on his face, but all he said was, "Ready to go?", so I made a mental note to ask him about it later. 

We teleported straight back to Seyruun, since the only reason we'd flown on the way in was to conceal our approach. The assorted young dragons looked a bit confused by the whole business. Well, all right, the injured ones looked like they were in pain, but that was hardly surprising. Thankfully, we hadn't lost anyone. 

Milgazia looked both tired and thoughtful, and I wondered just how much he'd figured out. He might be a pain in the ass, but he'd survived the Kouma War, and he wasn't stupid. He might have spotted the shells-and-pea game we'd been playing. 

Filia hadn't, I was pretty certain. She just looked pissed off, a look I was very familiar with. It made me wonder if I should have asked Gaav to hand Xellos over to her, rather than keeping him for myself . . . but she didn't know the plan and might have ended up doing him considerable damage. 

"Hey, there, dragon-boy," came an unexpected voice from my side: Luna Inverse, whose smile didn't reach her eyes. "So just where _were_ you off to in the middle of the fight?" 

"Accomplishing the primary objective," I replied. "Which we'll discuss later. In a closed conference with anti-eavesdropping spells in place." 

She raised her eyebrows, but changed the subject immediately. "When's the last time you had a talk with Filia?" 

"When we were negotiating with Milgazia," I said with a shrug. 

"She thinks you hate her." 

"Typical. The truth is that I just don't have anything to say to her. We belong in different worlds." 

"She doesn't think so." 

"I'm not responsible for her delusions." 

"Talk to her, Val." She deepened her voice as she said it, and her eyes flashed. 

I offered her a smirk. "Or you'll . . . what? What, exactly, do you think you can do to me? I'm curious. Do you really think you're powerful enough to show me some aspect of hell that I haven't already seen, just because you've got a rotting bit of a long-dead god clinging to you on the astral?" 

"I took on Xellos." 

"You hit Xellos in a weak point that I don't share: his lack of understanding of the physical plane. Furthermore, he underestimated you. I acknowledge that you're dangerous and need to be taken seriously—just not _that_ seriously." And she hadn't even defeated the slimy little cone—Gaav had done that. 

"You're a tough nut to crack," Luna admitted. "Why don't we make a bet?" 

"What kind of bet?" I wasn't sure whether to be suspicious or amused. She'd just reminded me she wasn't to be taken lightly, after all. 

"How about that if I can beat you in a fight, you'll talk to Filia." 

"And if you lose, you owe—the _Knight of Ceiphied_ , whoever it may be at the time I call the marker in—owes me a favour." I kept the lazy smirk on my face, but behind it, I was thinking hard about how to turn this to my advantage. "And it has to be a _fight_ , not a chess game or an arm wrestling match or something stupid like that. A contest of violence. You can choose weapons and venue, but they have to be approved by a neutral, third-party referee. I get to choose the time: tomorrow, mid-morning." 

Luna smiled crookedly. "You're thorough, too. Who would you suggest as a referee?" 

"I was thinking Zelgadis, if he'll agree." Any of the Seyruun royals would have done, really . . . except that I was afraid of Princess Amelia getting emotional over the whole business, and King Philionel was rumoured to be even worse than his daughter in that respect. I'd barely spoken to him, so I could only rely on his reputation. 

"Mmh. All right, I'll ask him, since I was the one who wanted this. I agree to your conditions, Val, last of the ancient dragons." She held out her hand. It took me a moment to realize that she wanted me to shake it, like a merchant finalizing a deal. 

I couldn't remember having ever shared such a gesture with a woman before. Her skin was deceptively soft and uncallused, her nails carefully manicured . . . and the sinews underneath as strong as I'd ever encountered in a human. Definitely not someone to be underestimated. 

"Tomorrow at ten, then. And I think your oversized boyfriend is waiting for you." 

"I'd be surprised if he weren't." I hadn't given him my report yet, after all, so Gaav and I had a lot we needed to talk about.


	34. Gaav

I did my best not to show it, but I was pretty fucking relieved he'd gotten away from Zelas in one piece. My dragon. That stupid attack/negotiation had been far too risky, but it had also been the only way I could think of that we could force something to happen. Well, that or attacking the King in the North, but the Shard would have been ready for that. 

"So what _is_ the real plan?" Lina Inverse was asking. "You've got the closed session Sis said you wanted, so stop holding back!" 

Personally, I wasn't sure that a conference room containing half the nobility of Seyruun counted as a "closed session"—I'd been intending to tell only the core group who needed to be involved—but I couldn't very well say that to all their faces, just in case. And the key people—me, Val, King Philionel, Luna, Lina, Gourry, Milgazia, Filia, and the chimera and his princess—were all here anyway. 

"The real plan is a tactical ambush," I said. A bunch of people exchanged glances, but no one actually argued with me. Good. "Let's start here." 

The map was an old one by human standards, labelled with the names of cities and countries long gone, but the contour of the land hadn't changed. I spread it on the table and waited for everyone to have a good look. 

Milgazia checked immediately, eyebrows shooting up, but then, like me, he'd been here when the countries on the map were still going concerns, so it was pretty unlikely that he wouldn't recognize it. 

"This is . . . Kouma War era?" Zelgadis said slowly. 

"Just before," I corrected. "It's the last one I've got that shows the important point." And I tapped a symbol with my finger. 

"'Shrine of the Five'," Lina Inverse read. "Why would _you_ care about a shrine to the Dragon Gods?" 

"Not just any shrine," Milgazia said. "Like Seyruun City, it was built in the form of a ward—one far more elaborate than an inscribed hexagram. In fact, the royal advisor who designed the layout of this city had trained there. Even if it has been damaged, the amplification effect of the ward on white and holy magic should be substantial. The Shard would be at a disadvantage there." 

The sorceress gave me a sharp look. "Except that you'll be at a disadvantage too, won't you?" 

I offered her a smirk. "You're assuming that I'm the weapon here. I'm not." 

"Then what are you?" 

"The bait." That had always been part of the plan. For its own safety, the Shard had to neutralize me somehow—kill me, get me back on its side (fat fucking chance), or reabsorb me. Val's report of his conversation with Zelas had just reinforced that. 

Everyone goggled at me . . . except Val, who scowled. He'd never been happy with that part, and I understood why. I wouldn't have been happy either, if our positions had been reversed. 

"The Shard isn't likely to bring more than one other Dark Lord with it," I explained. "Why the fuck would it? The Shard wants to talk to me, so it'll join me in the center of the ward. The other Dark Lord stays outside with Val—he can fend off any one of them for a while, if necessary. If the Shard is really paranoid and brings two, we're going to have to come up with some excuse for the other one to leave. I've already got a few ideas. Regardless, once we've got the fucking bastard alone, we charge up the ward and use it as the focus for a holy spell—I'd assume you know Radiant Execution even if no one else here does," I added, looking at Milgazia. "The princess can probably take one of the support positions—she's a shrine maiden—but we'll need a couple more priests or paladins to complete the figure. You'd know more about that than I would, though, so you get to pick them." 

"That spell isn't selective," the golden protested, to my surprise. "It will attack you as well as the Shard." 

I snorted. "I won't be at the center, I won't be caught by surprise . . . and I intend to teleport out anyway, using my bond with Val to work around the way the ward twists the astral." 

"But where's Taben-san in all of this?" Princess Amelia suddenly protested. 

"Nowhere," I snapped. "This is about destroying the Shard so it never comes back. I can't waste my time worrying about every pathetic little human who gets in the way." 

I expected her to crumple with a wail of, "But I thought he was your friend!" Instead, she reminded me again that humans change faster than dragons or Mazoku, and that she was being trained to rule a country. 

"I know getting rid of the Shard has to be our top priority, but I doubt you spent much time trying to figure out a way to save Taben-san. It's just not the way you think. So I'm hoping that someone here can come up with a way to tweak your plan so that he has a chance. A different spell we can use, maybe. I've never heard of Radiant Execution, but it doesn't sound very . . . forgiving. That's why an execution is only supposed to come after you have a proper trial. Anything else is unjust." Princess Amelia's mouth was set in firm lines. 

"That's my daughter!" King Philionel said approvingly. 

"We've still got his sister," Lina said. "Hey, it worked with Rezo, right? That's why you guys went and collected her in the first place. I don't know much about holy spells, though. Milgazia, got any ideas?" 

I scowled as the planning session started to barrel along out of my control. Fuck, I hated it when this kind of thing happened. They'd probably end up with something that massively increased the risk for very little reward. And there wasn't anything I could do about it, because I needed the power of a fucking holy spell cast by multiple skilled priest-mages working in concert. The alternative was fighting the Shard myself, and . . . well. It wasn't that I was worried about its power—it was slightly less than a seventh of half of what Dear Old Dad had been in his heyday, and I was slightly more than a fifth of the other half. So no contest there. But there was this nasty cold little niggling feeling squirming around inside me that kept whispering, _What if you're not as free of him as you think you are? What if the only reason you can disobey him so easily is that you haven't confronted him in person? What if the moment you approach him, your will is swamped, and you go back to being his fucking lapdog, fawning for the chance to lick blood from his hands?_

I wouldn't know until I actually faced the bastard. Until that happened, there would always be room for that tiny little niggle. That fear. 

Val was ignoring everyone else and looking at me with an odd expression in his eyes. I tasted his emotions and found . . . worry. Shit, was it obvious to everyone that I had something on my mind, or only to him? My hand found his under the conference table, and his fingers immediately slid around and between mine, weaving our hands together in a firm grip. Maybe he was trying to reassure me, or himself. I don't know. What he did do was remind me of why I couldn't let that stupid niggling question go unanswered. If there was something in me that might separate us, I needed to tear it out by the roots. Because I'd decided that he mattered to me, that I . . . loved him. 

"It's decided, then." Milgazia's voice broke through my introspection. "We will attempt the weaker spell first, and offer his sister the chance to speak to him . . . for whatever good it may do. Now, on the matter of the selection of additional priests and priestesses—" 

"I'll go." Filia spoke for the first time, and when everyone looked at her in surprise, she added, "I have the training, and I know the spells. That's more than we can say for anyone else we could find in Seyruun, unless one of the other dragons that came with Milgazia-dono is a priest or acolyte." 

Milgazia shook his head. "Those who came with me . . . weren't exactly of a scholarly bent. We will have to choose a human to fill the final place. Perhaps Princess Amelia can offer some suggestions? You were trained at the temple here." 

"I think we should ask Sylphiel," Amelia said. 

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Gourry said. "She's pretty good at that stuff." Since he'd been doing a good imitation of being asleep again, that made everyone stare at him. 

"I'm just surprised she's still here," Lina Inverse added, and I belately managed to connect a face to the name: the girl I'd seen with them in Sairaag. 

Although she might not know it, Lina's party had first caught my eye when the Rezo-Shard's awakening had drawn my attention and I'd seen them trying to attack it. I'd scryed her and her companions from time to time after that, right up until fucking Phibby had stuck his oar in and I'd realized that someone was going to have to get rid of her before he could use her. I'd caught at least glimpses of everyone she'd met on her travels up to the point of our confrontation in the Kataarts. I wondered what she would have said if she knew. 

"She said she didn't want to go back to Sairaag after what had happened," Princess Amelia reported. "I think the memories were too hard on her." 

"She did lose pretty much everything she had left when Hellmaster killed off Flagoon," the chimera added. "For the past few years, she's been running a clinic and school at the edge of the poor district here. She's just about the only priest some of those people trust." 

"Seyruun City has a poor district?" Val drawled. 

"To my everlasting shame, yes," King Philionel said. "It's difficult to resolve the situation when many of the people there refuse to trust anyone working for the crown. Some suffer from mental conditions causing paranoia. Others have genuinely been hurt by misguided or evil individuals that have managed to infiltrate our government. The best we can do is work through people that they do trust." 

"It might be nice to see Sylphiel again," Lina said thoughtfully. "And I'll bet she still cooks killer meals. Did she ever . . . I mean, after Gourry and I . . ." 

The chimera shook his head. "Unless something's changed in the past few days, she's still single. She's dated a couple of times, but it never quite worked out." 

The sorceress's guilt tasted like pork with apple sauce. Not bad. 

"Lina-san, it wasn't your fault," Princess Amelia said firmly. "That . . . It just wasn't meant to be, that's all." She shot a sidelong look at Gourry, who was pretending incomprehension again. The key word was _pretending_. I'd always thought he couldn't be quite as fucking dumb as he looked, and the flavour of pork with raisin sauce proved it. I guess he just found it easier to pretend not to know. 

"If this Sylphiel was a priestess in Sairaag, she would have been trained primarily in the Mysteries surrounding Flagoon," Milgazia said, "which would suit her to Rangort's point. Young Filia and I trained with Vrabazard's and Ragradia's priesthoods respectively, so it's clear which positions we would be best for. That would place Princess Amelia at Valwin's point." 

That produced a complex medley of flavours from Filia. Guilt, mostly. She seemed to be hauling a _lot_ of guilt around with her, about all kinds of different stuff. Idiot. 

To my surprise, Val reached across the table and ruffled her hair, making the young golden squeak with surprise. "Damn, you're high-maintenance sometimes. It wasn't your fault the Supreme Elder got a case of I'm-right-about-everything. I mean, how were you supposed to stop him? You were just a hatchling." 

I doubt anyone else could taste the bitterness that still hung about him. To me, the flavour was distinct and familiar: strong coffee with a hint of cream. How often had I fed off this very aspect of his moods? I squeezed his other hand, still interwoven with mine below the surface of the table. He glanced at me for an instant, and the corner of his mouth turned up. 

"If everyone knows what they're doing, then we're done here," I said. "Round up this Sylphiel, and we'll all go have a look at the old temple site tomorrow. Just to make sure there aren't any fuck-ups. We don't have time to fix mistakes." 

There was a belated eruption of babble from the fucking Seyruunese noble idiots in the cheap seats when Val and I stood up. I ignored them and teleported the hell out of there. 

The emptiness of the old crimson dragon aerie was a relief. I don't mind being around people, even humans—they can be interesting, and they're certainly fun to play with. I don't mind having them working for me, either. What pisses me off is having to pretend to be their equal. 

Back in the depths of time, I was worshipped as a _god_. There are still orcs and trolls who make sacrifices and all that shit to me. Pretending to be on a level with a human wasn't much different for that part of me than pretending to be on a level with a dog. 

The rest of me had learned better, of course. That mortals had some useful qualities I could learn from, even if their innate power wasn't as strong. But there was still some very primitive part of me that stung whenever someone pointed out that I wasn't in charge. 

"You don't look pleased," Val said, echoing my thoughts. I'd barely even realized that he'd come with me. 

"You're making me sound like that ass Milgazia. I'm not 'not pleased', I'm pissed off at just about everything and everyone." 

"Not including me, I hope," my dragon said. 

"Well, I'm still not thrilled about you making that stupid bet with the Knight of Ceiphied. She's dangerous." If she hadn't been, I wouldn't have gone through as much trouble as I had to get my hands on her. 

"I know, but if I just spar with you all the time, I'm going to start expecting everyone to fight like you, and then get my clock cleaned the moment I run into someone who doesn't. And if I hadn't agreed, I don't think she'd leave me alone. _And_ I have to sort out this crap with Filia, and this seems like as good a chance as any. I just hope it _stays_ sorted this time. Whenever I think she's got things clear in her head, she comes up with some other ridiculous . . ." He shook his head. "I don't understand how she can have been through what she's been through and still manage to be so . . . thick-headed." 

"Probably her way of coping," I said. When Val looked at me, I added, "What? I had to learn a lot of shit about how mortals think so I knew which officers to keep and which to throw to the dragon gods. I thought you knew that." 

"I just hadn't thought about what it _meant_ , I guess." A long pause, then, "For what it's worth, I'm still plenty pissed off at you, too. Couldn't you have found someone else to act as bait?" 

I shrugged. "Like who? I suppose I could offer them one of the Inverse sisters, but I don't trust that Luna to play her part, and as for Lina—" 

"She's out because the humans instinctively want to protect a pregnant mother." Val growled, a deep rumble that made the stone under our feet vibrate. "I don't want to be fucking logical about this! It's too risky, and we don't even know for certain what the risks are! If you don't make it, I—" 

I cupped his cheek in my hand and put my thumb across his lips, silencing him. "Val," I said, looking him straight in the eye. "If he kills me, I'll come back—I already promised you that. If he forces me to go with him, I'll trust you to pry me loose again. I know you won't give up. And if the absolute worst happens and he re-absorbs my essence and this fucking soul I've been hauling around isn't able to save me, there's something I want you to do. I want you to kill him, then I want you to hunt down the other Shards and kill them too. That's the memorial I want from you, understand? Get rid of Ruby-Eye. Get me my revenge. And leave the world in one piece afterwards." 

It would take him centuries, I knew. Enough time for me to put myself back together if there was anything left of me at all. And if there really wasn't anything left of me, well, at least I'd still have left my mark on the universe. 

If I had to go, that would sure as hell be a better way of doing it than getting stabbed in the back by Phibby.


	35. Val

I wanted to scream. I wanted to pummel him until he was bloody and willing to promise me that he wouldn't be trying any such nonsense just so that I would stop (not that I was likely to be able to do him enough damage for that!). He wasn't supposed to be making plans for what would happen after he died. He wasn't supposed to think it was necessary. It made me remember the feeling of the bond shattering inside my head, of him vanishing into nothing and leaving me behind. 

And that, of course, was why it _was_ necessary. That was what paralyzed my voice and my hands and left me standing there shaking. 

"Val, I—" He reached out, clearly intending to pull me into his arms. I growled, dodged, backed away. 

"Congratulations," I snapped. "Now I'm even more pissed off than you are." 

He snorted, but I saw the corners of his mouth turn up. "I doubt it. You're just more focused, 'cause it's only me that you're pissed off at, and not the entire world." 

"So what should we do about it?" 

He shrugged. "We could always have make-up sex." 

I froze. Boggled at him. And then, almost unwillingly, I started to laugh. "You bastard. I don't know how you managed before we got together, if you're this horny all the time." 

"I jerked off a lot. Usually thinking about you while I did." There was that wide, familiar smirky grin of his. Just seeing it relaxed something inside me. Although it was more likely that Valwin would discard his hat than that I'd ever admit it. "Got your head on the right way again? 'Cause we've got some planning to do. I'd really rather not make you wait for me to come back, and I'd really rather not be _nowhere_ for several years again, but we need to get our shit together if that isn't going to happen." 

"Yeah . . ." 

He planted himself on the bench by the table, and patted the surface of it beside him. "Sit down. We've got some maps to go over." 

Terrain evaluation. Contingency plans. It was a familiar routine, although I couldn't exactly call it beloved. Gaav produced several maps, detailed ones of the Shrine of the Five and its surrounding area. Pre-Kouma, of course—the area hadn't been resettled after the war had depopulated it, since there was no particular reason anyone would want to go there with the temple gone. The maps were just a starting point, so that we'd know what we needed to check in detail when we went to see the place. 

"Are you really sure this is going to work?" I asked after we'd be working on it for about half an hour. "If it was one of the ones that was destroyed during the war, won't it be . . . I don't know . . ." 

"We don't need the altar for amplification, just the general layout of the building, and we didn't break up the foundations or anything when we trashed the place," Gaav said, using two completely different "we"s in the process. "That Sylphiel of theirs should be able to reconsecrate the place if we absolutely have to, given that she's a full priestess. Hell, Milgazia might be able to do it." 

"What if part of the foundation has, I don't know, washed away or something? It _has_ been nearly a thousand years," I pointed out. 

My mate rolled his eyes. "Fuck, you just aren't going to stop worrying, are you? Fine, we'll go and take a quick look." 

A few moments later, we were standing on a low hill overlooking a mess of hummocky grass with a few bits of stone poking up out of it. If you looked carefully, you really could see the general outline of the shape Gaav had pointed out on the maps, although there were gaps in it. 

My mate cast an Abyss Flare with a casual flip of his hand, using shamanism to conceal the fact that a Mazoku and not a human was doing this, and held the spell until not only the grass, but the soil below it had been reduced to fine ash. A wind-elemental spell was then able to blow it away, revealing the foundations of the old temple. 

It had been made of white stone, and the colour was still visible between the char marks and dirt-stains. The figure was still almost perfect, with only two gaps, and there were enough loose rocks lying around that we should be able to fill those in. We'd need to bring in a mason, though, if we didn't want things to be easily blasted loose, or else make use of Gaav's power. 

As I traced the outlines of the magic circle with my eyes, I felt a tremour inside me, a small movement like the gears inside one of the windup toys Jillas had made for me as a hatchling. It wasn't painful, but it made me uncomfortable because I couldn't understand what was happening or why. Was there some kind of spell on the old temple's foundations? The magic circle itself should be inert until power was poured into it. 

"Val?" 

I shook my head. "Something's not right. I want to go have a closer look at that—" I gestured at the building foundations. 

"So what are you waiting for?" 

_I don't know._ The scales on the back of my neck were hackling, and yet it didn't feel like I was in danger, exactly. Inwardly, I sneered at my foolishness. I forced myself to take the first step down the hill, and then another and another. I could hear the crunch of Gaav's footsteps behind me. Whatever this was didn't seem to be affecting him, just me. 

I stopped at arm's length from one of the taller still-standing chunks of wall. It rose all the way to my waist. I examined it, but it just looked like fire-scarred rock. Reached out to touch it, and— 

Light erupted. From the wall and from my arm. Energy was flowing over me on the astral, and I didn't even have time to make a startled noise before I suddenly and involuntarily reverted to my true form. Gaav said something exceptionally vile, even for him, as my sudden expansion sent him tumbling ass over teakettle. 

I made a sound like a scared hatchling and scrambled away from the wall I'd been touching. Hell, I _felt_ like a scared hatchling. What the hell was this? What the hell was happening—had just happened, I corrected myself as the light began to die down. Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye, I didn't need this! 

"You okay, little dragon?" 

"I think so." _Just scared shitless . . ._ "What the hell was that?" 

"Holy power, it felt like. Or something enough like it to give me a headache." Gaav, still in his human form, appeared to my right and reached out to rest his hand on my eyebrow ridge. It was weird to see him as tiny . . . but the warmth of his skin against my scales felt good. "Next time someone offers you a chunk of fucking Ceiphied to eat . . . don't. Even if it means leaving the Knight of Ceiphied to die. Got it?" 

I . . . digested that. "Do you really think that's all it was?" 

"You got any better ideas?" He was stroking my eyebrow ridge now, just absently, but it made me want to flop over like a dog and make little contented noises. I hoped that was just the sudden release of pressure. 

"No," I admitted. I didn't have the taste of rotting godsflesh in my mouth right now, but maybe that side effect had . . . smoothed out, somehow. "I think it's pretty obvious that I shouldn't touch that thing again, though. Or enter the temple grounds." 

"Which is a fucking nuisance, but we'll work around it. Good thing we found this out now, while we can still adjust our plans." 

"Yeah." 

"Anyway, it looks like everything here is in good enough condition for us to use." 

"Uh-huh." 

"Your eyelids are drooping. You can't be that tired." 

"Mmm. No, but . . ." 

"But?" 

"Your hand. Feels good." 

I caught the most magnificent nonplussed expression on his face in the split second before he started to laugh. "Fucking hedonistic dragon!" But his hand never stopped stroking. 

"I wish," I began, and then stopped. 

"Hmm?" 

"That all this was over. That we were free . . . but I guess we never will be entirely free, will we? Given what you are, and what I am . . ." 

"In my experience, threats to the existence of the world come up maybe once every six to ten centuries. In the absence of Lina Inverse, anyway. So we should be free of obligations more often than not, if we can just get through this." 

"What about the other Dark Lords? I mean . . ." There was no need to finish the sentence. He remembered as well as I did what our lives had been like before, having to fight and destroy lesser Mazoku practically every day, just to survive. 

"Without Phibby constantly prodding them into action, my bet is that they're going to leave us alone. The little shit was the only one who still took the old Mazoku agenda at all seriously. The rest of us were tired of it even before the Kouma War hit. Of course, since he was the strongest of us, no one wanted to piss him off more than necessary. So they went through the motions of chasing us around." 

Lots of different values for "us" in there again, I reflected. "Did Hellmaster want to die that badly?" I found myself asking. 

Gaav shrugged. "I never could quite figure him out. Phibby was the oldest of us, the first made, and the most like Dear Old Dad. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was able to access some of Ruby-Eye's memories. The rest of us can't—they're too different, too outside our experience. Like it or not, we came into existence inside this world, and it's all we've ever known. We don't remember what it was like in the instant of creation, but Ruby-Eye and Ceiphied did. _Do_ , I suppose, in the case of some of the Shards, although . . ." 

"Although?" I prompted. 

"Sometimes I think they've been . . . altered . . . too. Humanized, if you like. The Shards in Taben, Rezo, Lei Magnus . . . they weren't quite like what I remember of the complete Ruby-Eye. I used to think that it was just because his qualities had been unevenly distributed, but . . ." Another shrug. "Maybe it's just me. I mean, it isn't like they'd tell me even if I asked. Now. Shrink yourself down again. We need to get back to our planning session, and you'll have a hard time even seeing human-scale maps when you're full-sized." 

Plans. Damn. I still didn't want to be logical about this, wanted to beat him bloody until he agreed to use Lina Inverse as bait instead of himself. Even if it would make the humans argue and complain. Because I knew that if something went wrong, no one but me would fight to save my mate. No one else really wanted him around. At best, they tolerated him. At worst, they hated him. For what he was, not who he was. 

I was afraid for him. So terribly afraid. But telling him that wouldn't do any good. Even if he wasn't wholly confident, he wasn't likely to show it any more than he had already. 

And so I gritted my teeth and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening arguing about which of our holy spellcasters needed how many guards of what kind and where they should be stationed. 

I couldn't sleep that night. The silence in my room made me want to scream. In the end, I went to Gaav's room and found him still awake too, sharpening and polishing his massive sword. Even thought it needed neither. 

"Val?" 

"Can I sleep here?" We hadn't shared the fur-piled bed yet. For sleeping or anything else. 

Bushy eyebrows flickered up. "Sure. Does this mean I should add another closet?" 

"I don't know." We'd always separated when returning here at night, and it had never bothered me before. "Let's take it slow. We have all the time in the world, right?" 

"I promised you we would." 

I smiled crookedly. "And you're the best liar I've ever known." 

"Probably, but what I say to you, I fucking well mean." 

"I know." 

He sighed, and set his sword aside. Flipped back the untidy mass of furs and blankets on the bed. "C'mere, little dragon." 

I took a step closer and found myself tangled in his arms, suddenly naked, the warmth of his body wrapping around mine. My arms slid around his waist, locking us together. 

"You're being kind of premature worrying about me, anyway," Gaav said. "Or had you forgotten that you've got a duel with the fucking Knight of Ceiphied tomorrow?" 

"That's just a sparring match," I protested. 

"I hope you're right." 

"Now who's worrying?" 

My mate sighed. "I know it's fucking stupid, but . . . well, she hates all Mazoku. And she's not really fond of people who associate with Mazoku, either. She might try something and try to make it look like an accident." 

"I'll keep an eye out," I promised. "But I don't think she will. Not with that many people watching. I'm more worried about her not being able to do her job when we try to trap the Shard." 

"If she doesn't, I'll turn her into a fucking pretzel," my mate said. "Now, are we going to sleep?" His hands slid down my back to cup my ass, suggesting there was something else he might have been interested in doing instead, but what he added was, "You need your rest. We both do." 

I laid down, and he spooned his body around mine, chest to back, arm flung possessively across me. Everything smelled faintly of him. It was . . . comforting. I drifted off easily, slept deeply, and woke to feel something pressed against my thighs and ass that hadn't been there last night. 

Even as I thought, _I'm going to be really pissed off if he says someone else's name,_ my mate began to rut against me with slow motions of his hips. 

"Mmm . . . Val . . ." 

"No fair you enjoying yourself at my expense," I whispered, and twisted around so that we were facing each other—which took some doing, because his response to my squirming too much tended to involve gripping me tighter. Eventually, I got an angle that let me rub my morning wood against his. A little more wiggling, and I managed to get a hand in there too, and curl it around both our cocks. Gaav had already leaked a fair amount of slick wetness, letting my fingers slide easily over both of us. 

I let my hand move slowly at first, letting the heat build and settle deep into my body, repressing the soft, needy sounds that wanted to spill from my mouth. I'd never done anything like this before—how could I have? Gaav had always been the dominant one in our relationship, and there had never been anyone else for me. I knew my own body, but not yet what would make him moan and curse and growl my name in that thick, throaty tone that made my entire body shiver . . . 

" _Val . . ._ " 

Yeah, just exactly like that. 

His hand closed over mine as his eyes flickered open, and he began to guide my movements at a quicker pace, stroking and squeezing and rubbing and . . . when had he brought his tail out? But there it was, rubbing against the crack in my ass, scales against skin . . . now it was circling my asshole with delicate control, making the muscle pulse and . . . oh, fuck, how could such a light touch feel so good? My hand sped up without my willing it to. Gaav smirked at me, and his tail dipped just barely inside . . . on the astral, he was licking and nuzzling my wings while his breath just warmed the back of my neck . . . My back arched slightly and my legs tensed as I fought to keep my hands from erupting into claws and scales and my balls felt heavy and tight and oh Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye I was going to— 

I howled as I came, and Gaav's hand sped up even more as mine stopped moving, driving for his own climax now, squeezing my fingers tight against his pulsing cock until he made another of those deep growling sounds and splattered both our stomachs with sticky wetness. 

"Now, that's a great way to wake up," he said, grinning broadly, as his grip finally loosened. His hand didn't entirely lose contact with me, nor did it stay still. It felt like he was playing with the sticky mess on my skin, using it to trace patterns on me. "Let's do it again tomorrow." 

"And the day after, no doubt," I said. "Horny Mazoku." 

"Perverted dragon." 

" _I'm_ perverted? You're the one drawing designs on my stomach in jizz!" 

He laughed. "Yeah, but you're letting me do it." 

He had a point there, although I wasn't going to admit it. "Shut up," I growled instead. 

He laughed again and nuzzled my hair. "I'm pretty sure I warned you that I don't do romantic." 

"And I don't know what the hell I'd do _with_ romantic, so that works just fine." 

"Good." His hand finally stilled, and he said, "Time to get up now. You've got an appointment in a couple of hours." 

I growled wordlessly as I pushed the furs back. He'd been tracing his sigil on my stomach, I discovered. Demonstrating ownership. Of course. That was just how he was, and I wouldn't have fallen for him if he'd been shy, retiring, and submissive. 

Breakfast, as usual, was brought in from some random restaurant somewhere in the world. I don't think he ever used the same one twice. He'd taught me, all those years ago when we'd been on the run, that falling into too obvious a routine was dangerous. It put you at risk of ambush. I did sometimes think wistfully that it would be nice if the food didn't vary in quality from day to day, though. Today it was a full hot breakfast, with sausage and pancakes, and the sausages were a bit too greasy. 

He could have just waved his hand and created the food, but it never came out quite right when he did that. I'd never gotten up the courage to ask him about it, but I suspected he was just the Mazoku equivalent of a bad cook. 

The food sat like lead in my stomach. For all that I'd claimed the upcoming fight with Luna Inverse was nothing more than a sparring match, I was starting to get worried now. I didn't think she'd kill me, or even seriously injure me, but, well, accidents happen, and she might disable me temporarily. If I couldn't recover by the time we intended to spring our trap for the Shard, things might go badly wrong. Put the world at risk . . . put my mate at risk . . . but I couldn't just throw the fight. The very idea made my tail lash. I don't back down from challenges. 

So I cast Inner Still to keep my stomach from acting up any more, and used my power to create a length of string. It wasn't very good string, but it didn't have to be. I was just going to play cat's cradle with it, not tie something down. 

Gaav watched with one eyebrow raised as I wound the string around my fingers and began to manipulate it. I couldn't tell whether his expression was more amused or bemused. 

"It's complicated enough that I have to concentrate on it, and physical enough to work out the jitters without being so physical it tires me out," I said defensively. 

"I wasn't going to say anything, little dragon." 

"Sure you weren't," I drawled, and forced a smile as I got my fingers tangled on my way from broom to onion. 

After an hour it was more than I could stand, and I got up from my seat at the table and looked at Gaav, who nodded and came over the stand beside me. 

The world hiccuped, and we were in Seyruun. 

It was still a little early, but that was okay. It would give me time to pace out the edges of the hard-packed drill field we were going to be fighting on, and check it for traps, holes, or loose footing. I went over every inch of it, slowly, feeling silly, telling myself that I shouldn't be so worried about a remote possibility . . . but I also felt that there was something wrong. The problem was, it was just that: a feeling. An intuition. Nothing I could put my finger on. 

I hated that kind of crap, but there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. And the niggle refused to go away. 

"You're here early." 

I looked up to see Luna Inverse crossing the field toward me. She was wearing the same clothes she'd worn for the raid on Wolf Pack Island: loose trousers, short-sleeved blouse, and ankle boots, with a kitchen knife sheathed at her side. 

"I wanted a look at the terrain. Got a problem?" I was going to fight a duel with someone whose preferred weapon was a kitchen utensil—would she come at me with a spatula or a whisk if I made her drop the knife? Yet another reason why I couldn't throw this. 

Luna shrugged. "Why would I have? I went over the area yesterday before I finalized my selection. It's sand over packed clay—solid and good footing. Have you seen Filia?" 

"Why, did you lose her?" The words came out sounding even more acidic than I'd intended. 

"Sort of. No one's seen her since breakfast, and I'm starting to get a bit worried. After all, it would be strange if she wasn't here." 

"She's probably hiding somewhere trying to think of some way to keep us from fighting. She always used to hate it when I got into fights." 

It was Gaav who snorted and said, "She tries to bean random people with a fucking twenty-pound mace, and she doesn't like to fight? Tell me another one." 

"That's . . . well, it's kind of difficult to explain. Spinal reflex, maybe. She tends to regret it after she realizes what she's done." Unless the target was Xellos . . . Well, actually, she tended to regret trying to hit him, too, but that was because she always missed and ended up destroying whatever had been behind him. And Xellos knew how to position himself strategically. 

"For someone who doesn't like her, you sure know her well," Luna said. 

I gave her a Look. "Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye, could you _be_ any more transparent? I'm not interested in having this discussion with you. I'm here to beat the stuffing out of you, not to talk." 

"What's the hurry? Our referee isn't even here yet." 

"He will be soon," Gaav rumbled. "I can taste that gloom from a mile away. Most boring flavour in the world." 

And sure enough, there was Zelgadis, jogging across the field. 

"We need to postpone this," he told us as soon as he got close enough for us to hear him without him needing to raise his voice. 

"So Filia's really missing?" I asked. 

"Filia? Oh, hell. No, it's because I just saw Xellos." 

" _Fuck_ ," Gaav said savagely. "He shouldn't have been able to . . . except . . ." The expression on his face as he turned to Luna Inverse was a bit frightening even to me. "That little stab trick you pulled on Wolf Pack must have made it possible for him to pull nearly all of himself into the physical. He wouldn't have tripped the spell I laid down that way. And I'd bet my ass that the reason that fucking stupid golden dragon chit is missing is that he grabbed her."


	36. Filia

"What are you doing?" I tugged my arm, trying to pull away from Xellos' grip, but he was stronger than I was. Stronger than a dragon. 

"I'm sorry, dear Filia, but I need you to stay with me for the time being." Xellos' expression was . . . more serious than usual, but not really serious. He wasn't smiling that annoying little smile, but his eyes remained mostly shut, their colour indistinguishable. 

"I said let me _go_ , you walking garbage pile!" I swung my mace at his head. Maybe I should have wondered why he hadn't taken it away from me, but I was too angry to even think about it. 

Normally, he would have dodged. Vanished and reappeared somewhere else, or just ducked, whichever he thought would be more annoying. This time, he caught it, grabbing Mace-kun just below the head. And for a second, his eyes opened, just far enough that I could see the tiniest sliver of purple. I knew him well enough to know that wasn't good. 

"I suppose I should know enough by now never to expect politeness from a dragon, but somehow you always manage to surprise me, dear Filia." 

And why was he calling me "dear" all of a sudden? 

"What do you think you're _doing_?" I repeated, and this time, he shook his head ever so slightly. Which wasn't an answer, but I couldn't wrestle Mace-kun free to try to hit him again. I could feel my tail pop out, raising my skirts. Perhaps that made me feel a bit better, because I belatedly realized something. "How did you even get in here? Gaav was supposed to—" 

"Ah, yes. Gaav. He did have an interesting spell in place around the palace—it took me some work to find a way around it! Don't worry, no one knows I'm here yet except you." 

And how did that make sense? If he was here to kill someone, he should be going after Gaav or Val or Luna or Lina or maybe Milgazia. I wasn't silly enough to believe I was important compared to any of them. But what other reason . . . ? "If you're going to use me as a hostage, it won't work." 

Xellos giggled. "Oh, no, of course not! You would make a _terrible_ damsel in distress." 

"Then why _are_ you here?" I was still straining against his grip, still unable to free either myself or my mace. 

"I have a message." 

"For me?" 

"Of _course_ not for you. Who could possibly want me to deliver a message to you? You may be rude and violent, but you aren't that stupid. I'm sure you can figure out who it's for. The message is, 'Six hours'." 

" . . . What?" He'd just said the message wasn't for me, so why was he telling it to me? And "six hours" of or until . . . what? 

"'Six hours'," Xellos repeated, and for the first time I could remember, I saw a hint of strain on his face. "I thought you were at least bright enough to be able to repeat a couple of words—perhaps I was mistaken!" 

What was wrong with him? If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he was actually . . . frightened. 

"'Six hours'," I found myself saying. "Fine. I'll tell everyone I meet—I'm sure you didn't mean it was supposed to be a _secret_ , now did you?" I couldn't remember ever having gotten to throw his favourite line back in his face before. It felt very satisfying. 

"Of course not, or I wouldn't have told you." His expression had eased, but that mocking little half-smile of his wasn't back. "Strange. I want to . . . No wonder Gaav is slightly insane, if this is how he feels all the time! But right now, we're _out_ of time. Such a shame." 

He pushed me away, sent me staggering across the floor with Mace-kun swinging wildly—he'd never done _that_ before, either. I reached out with my free hand, trying to get a grip on his arm, or at least his clothes. _Why are you acting like this?_ I wanted to ask him that so badly, all of a sudden, but the moment my outstretched fingers brushed the edge of his cape, he was gone. 

A moment later, the door to the sitting room we'd been in slammed open, and Val was there, and Luna and Zelgadis, with Gaav looming behind them in the hallway. Well, actually, Val came charging straight into the room and grabbed me by the shoulders. 

"Are you alright? Where's Xellos?" The expression on his face . . . I hadn't often seen him so concerned. 

"I'm fine," I said. "Xellos . . . left." I felt my tail sweeping back and forth, and blushed, pulling it back in. I would have liked to put Mace-kun back in his proper place too, but that would have meant lifting my skirts while there were three males in the room. 

Val's shoulders relaxed visibly. "Shit, don't worry me like that. Do you have any idea what Xellos wanted?" 

"You were worried? About me?" That was . . . more than a bit of a surprise, really. 

"Of course I was worried! I . . . You're family, some way, okay? And I don't ever want to lose a member of my family again. Even one I find difficult to get along with sometimes." His eyes . . . were on fire. Burning, intense, but not lonely and cold. 

This . . . was what Val should always have been. Maybe I'm a little dense, because it had taken me a long time to understand it, but that clear fire, that fierce desire to protect, was the real Val. It was what had twisted, and then burnt out, in Valgaav. It was what I hadn't been able to reawaken when I'd been his foster-mother. 

_He really is . . . all right._ Maybe after a few more repetitions, that would penetrate down into the part of my brain where my maternal instincts lived. 

I hugged him, just for a moment. My big, strong, wonderful foster-son. He pulled away after a few seconds, but he also said, "Be more careful, okay?" 

"I will," I said. "I promise." 

"You still haven't told us what Xellos wanted," Gaav rumbled, coming over to stand near Val and wrapping one arm around his body. I was slowly getting used to seeing that, too. The two of them, together. _Gaav is good for Val even if he isn't good in general_ was another concept I was still working on, but the combination was starting to look right. 

I shook my head. "It was the strangest thing, really. He had a message, and he told me what it was, but not who it was for." 

"And what was that message?" Zelgadis prompted. 

"'Six hours'," I quoted. 

" _Fuck,_ " Gaav snarled, his expression suddenly thunderous. He rounded on Zel. "Get that Sylphiel woman of yours rounded up _now_. Go for her yourself. I can spot your aura at a distance, but I have no idea what hers looks like." 

Zel's eyes narrowed for a moment, then widened. "Right," he said, and took off. 

"You think he means that the Shard is going to visit the temple ruins early," Luna said, giving the Dark Lord an odd look. 

"What else could he have fucking well meant?" Gaav snapped. "It all fits together. He dropped the message off with her—" He gestured at me. "—because he knew that if he told me directly, I'd lose my temper and reduce him to a grease spot, and he'd have a hard time bouncing back from that while he's locked to the physical. I can't even be sure whether it was Zelas or the fucking Shard that sent him." 

"Does it matter?" Luna tossed back. 

"It might. The range of tactical options is slightly different if Zelas is willing to risk having her pet outed as a double agent. Not that I'd expect you to be able to tell. You're a shitty tactician." 

The Knight of Ceiphied looked at him as though she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "And I suppose you're better?" 

"It's part of what I was created for. Did you think Ruby-Eye was dumb enough to believe the Mazoku could win by charging randomly around the fucking battlefield? He spun the five of us off so that he could delegate some of the planning. Just because I'm not on that side anymore doesn't mean I've forgotten any of that shit or how to make it work." Gaav was scowling, but he relaxed slightly as Val touched his hand, covering it with his smaller one and interlacing their fingers. "We're not going to have time now for most of the prep I'd intended to do," the Dark Lord continued. "Six hours gives us just enough time to patch up the breaks in the ward so that they don't come apart again too easily, and make sure everyone knows their spells." 

"Wait a minute," Luna said. "The ward at this old temple is broken?" 

"There's some damage," Val said. "It isn't too bad, considering. We just have to put some rocks back in place and stick them down so that they don't come loose too easily. If we had a little longer, we could just have had a mason do it, but now we're going to have to try something quick and dirty. Pile the rocks and fuse them with a spell, probably." 

"We'll give the chimera half an hour to locate our additional priestess," Gaav said. "That's how much time you've got to grab anything you need. And warn Milgazia." 

Luna gave him another narrow-eyed look. "All right. I won't pretend to like it, but all right. I'll go find Milgazia, the princess, and my sister. You wait here." 

Gaav waved her away—I'd been expecting him to say something along the lines of, "Since when do I take orders from you?" punctuated with an obscenity or three, but he didn't. Instead, he flopped down on a chair, somehow managing not to collapse it and to get his sword off his back as he was on his way down, and scowled at nothing until Val perched himself on the arm of the chair and began to play with his mate's ridiculously long hair—how _did_ he manage to keep it so long, and in such good condition? I almost wanted to ask him what kind of shampoo he used . . . but there was something else that was bothering me more. 

"Do you mind if I talk to you?" I asked. 

"Seems to me you already are," Gaav rumbled. I ignored it. I was starting to get used to him being rude, as I'd gotten used to Xellos trying to bait me. It wasn't _nice_ , but it was routine. That was how life with Mazoku worked. 

"Xellos was acting strange," I said. 

Gaav snorted. Val snickered and asked, "How could you tell?" 

"Please, I'm serious. He . . . after he gave me the message, he wasn't laughing at me anymore. It felt all wrong." 

The two of them exchanged looks. To my surprise, it was Val who spoke. "He's got a thing for you—didn't you ever notice?" 

I wanted to say that was insane, but . . . "Is _that_ why he keeps visiting me?" 

"Probably," Gaav rumbled. "At least in part. Although he might not have known that himself. If I had to guess, he was acting weird because being locked to the physical meant he had a physical _reaction_ to you for the first time, and he was trying to figure out how the fuck to handle it. Mazoku mostly understand that kind of desire from the outside, and when you see it from the _inside_ for the first time, it can be pretty disconcerting." He and Val exchanged another look, and I tried not to think about what kind of memory those words might have conjured up for the two of them. I knew they were sleeping together, but I'd been trying very hard not to visualize anything. 

"But I don't like him," I found myself saying. 

"I doubt he cares," Val said. "If it's any consolation, I doubt he'll do anything about his feelings, even if he manages to figure them out. He'd consider tying himself to a mortal . . . beneath him. So if you're okay with him doing nothing, there shouldn't be a problem." 

"Of course I'm okay with him not doing anything!" I exploded. "I wish that Mazoku garbage heap would just leave me alone!" Then I winced, remembering just who I was talking to. What Gaav was. But before I could say anything more—I don't even know what I would have said, since I wasn't about to apologize for insulting a race like the Mazoku—Milgazia and Luna appeared in the doorway. 

"Amelia and my sister went with Zelgadis," the Knight of Ceiphied said, her expression grim. 

"I understand the timetable is being moved up," the Elder added. It was still a bit difficult for me to think of someone Milgazia's appearance as an Elder—why, he looked younger than my father! _You can't be an Elder until your hatchlings' hatchlings start laying eggs—_ that had been the rule in our clan. Milgazia didn't seem old enough for that; maybe the equivalent of a human thirty-five or forty. 

"Someone else moved it up for us," Gaav said sourly. "My bet is that once they get to the temple, they're going to stake the place out, so we won't have a chance to sneak in and set up later. Meaning that it's now or never." He frowned, and his eyes unfocused a bit. "The chimera's stopped somewhere. I guess that means he's found this other priestess of his." 

"I thought it was difficult for you to scry for human beings," I said. 

"Normal humans. It isn't that hard to spot half a brau demon wandering around without the other half." 

Milgazia looked fascinated. Luna looked disgusted. As for me, I wasn't sure how I felt. I always tried to think about Zelgadis as a person, and not a set of parts thrown together by Ruby-Eye-as-Rezo. 

"What are we waiting for, then?" Val asked, sliding off the chair arm. 

Gaav rose to his feet. "Feisty little dragon," he said, and leaned down to give Val a kiss. I forced myself not to look away. This was what they were, and the sooner I got used to it, the better. "You three got everything you need?" he added to the rest of us. 

"What exactly do you think we would need?" Luna tossed back. 

Gaav shrugged. "Weapons. Your lucky charm. How the fuck do I know? If you're ready, let's go pick up the others." 

That was the last warning we got before the world twitched, and we were somewhere else. _How does he do that?_ It didn't feel like the teleportation spell I'd been taught by the Elders at the temple, and that one was strictly line-of-sight, anyway. 

_Val would probably know._ The thought brought only the slightest sense of shock now. Val probably _would_ know the difference between the dragon spell and the Mazoku . . . action. He might even be able to explain it to me. Maybe I would ask him, if I caught him away from Gaav. 

All that passed through my mind fairly quickly as I took in our new location. A street, not in the best of shape, although the architecture was still clearly Seyruunese, pale stone and whitewash and red-tiled roofs. There were cobbles missing from the street itself, though, and the whitewash on some of the buildings was chipped and greying. 

The building we were in front of looked like someone had spent some effort on it recently, though. Two ragged children were sitting on the steps, and I thought they might have been playing some kind of game using pebbles for counters until we'd shown up and scared them. At the foot of the steps, as though protecting the building from us, was a group of six people, most of them familiar: Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis, and Amelia. With them were a woman in priestess' robes—not the same ones that I'd worn, but of similar type—and Taben's sister, Perella Raisten, looking frightened but determined. 

"Fuck," Gaav muttered. "Okay, whatever. I'll bring you along if you want to come, because I don't have time to argue with you, but you're going to have to protect yourselves, got it?" 

Lina grinned. "Well, that makes things a lot easier." 

" _Liiiina_ ," Luna said in an ominous voice, and Lina shivered and hid behind Gourry. 

Milgazia grabbed the knight of Ceiphied's arm. "Gaav is correct—we have no time to argue. Although I am no happier about it than you." 

Luna subsided, although she was still scowling, and Lina was still hiding behind her husband. 

Reality twitched again, and we were all on a hillside incongruously studded with flowers. Below us, there was a patch of raw earth, with white pavements and foundations revealed in the middle of it, and loose stones scattered around. 

There were two visible breaks in the shape of the ward outlined by the white stones, and I sighed. It had already been such a long day . . .


	37. Gaav

Six hours later, I was seriously starting to wonder if the slimy little cone hadn't been talking about something else, and we'd all run out here without proper preparation for nothing. I'd been sitting in the middle of the fucking ward for more than half that time, with my skin prickling with its energies. In my head, I cursed the thing and wished that we'd never had to repair it, or that I'd done a better job of blasting the old temple off its foundations in the first place. 

In their positions around the edge, Filia was playing cat's cradle, Princess Amelia was muttering what seemed to be the rough draft of some kind of life-is-wonderful speech to herself, Milgazia was reading a book, and Sylphiel, who I hadn't actually spoken to yet, was meditating. She was the only one who didn't look bored out of her skull. Not that I was sure how much was in her skull to begin with. Having watched some of her travels with Lina Inverse and company, I'd seen her little "Flare Carrot" act. Fuck, I'd nearly busted my gut laughing over that one, in part because I understood exactly how she'd screwed up. She honestly hadn't been able to visualize hurting anyone, not even an orc or a bandit or a Mazoku, so she'd lost her will at the last moment. 

As for Lina Inverse and company, including the Knight of Ceiphied (who seemed to be repressing her energies somehow), they could have been anywhere that wasn't visible from where I sat. Really, I didn't care what the fuck they did. It might have been different if Lina had been free to use her full power or her husband had still had Gorun Nova, but under the circumstances, they were about as much use as a snorkel to a fishman. 

They'd taken Taben's sister with them, though. She might do us some good. Or not. I wasn't really sure, so I hadn't even tried to incorporate her into the plan. Her utility depended too much on whether or not Taben had a deep-rooted streak of sentiment for her, and that's one aspect of the human mind I know almost nothing about. 

Val had positioned himself on a slight rise that gave him a good view of the site, playing sentry. Every so often, he'd pace back and forth to loosen himself up, but other than that, he didn't move. Worry was etched in the tilt of his head and the line of his shoulders, even fizzing along the mate-bond that I was trying so hard to ignore. I couldn't afford to be distracted, even by him. Especially by him. 

I still didn't understand what had happened when he'd touched the temple foundations, and it bothered me. Yes, okay, he had a big fucking chunk of Ceiphied in his system, but he'd mostly assimilated it. It certainly shouldn't have done anything like _that_. But, like I'd said to him, what other reason could there be? Yeah, he was a dragon, whose natural power derived from the Flare Dragon's, but dragons weren't like Mazoku: they were mortal and had freedom of choice. They could even learn black magic and channel Ruby-Eye's power if they chose, just like humans could. 

Something wasn't right, and the "something" concerned my mate. On the astral, my tail was flicking back and forth in irritation, because there was nothing I could do, nothing at all. Insufficient information. And ignorance was only marginally better than being dead, because if I wasn't careful it was going to end up _making_ me dead. Or making Val dead, which was worse, because I couldn't guarantee he'd come back this time. That he'd done so once before had been a fluke. 

Those were the two things I couldn't protect him from (well, beyond a certain point): death, and the loss of me. 

Scowling, I kicked myself in the ankle. This was _not_ the time to be thinking about this shit! I needed to keep my mind on the reason we were here, or fucking Ruby-Eye was going to land on us all like twenty tons of dead dimos. 

Coming out here in such a hurry had been a mistake. 

Even as that passed through my mind, something grated against my half-crippled astral senses like nails on a chalkboard. _Here he comes._ Space screamed as it bent and twisted and then snapped back into place slightly malformed, revealing three figures, none of them particularly impressive on the physical if you didn't know who they were. Grau was the biggest, but he still looked like a witch doctor from a low-budget play. Xellos specializes in looking harmless, at least when he has his eyes closed. And Taben really _was_ harmless without Ruby-Eye riding him. Even the way his eyes were glowing red wasn't enough to dispel that impression completely. 

Well, it didn't look like Xellos had been outed as a double agent. That was something, anyway. Although we'd have to see how this played out. Ruby-Eye might yet opt to stage an object lesson for the traitor in front of his allies. There's a reason it's classic. 

" **Interesting setup you have here, Gaav-kun.** " Not Taben's voice, but a deep rumble with harmonics derived from the screams of dying children. 

"I might say the same to you, Lord," I replied. The title tasted bitter. I'd promised myself I would never call the bastard that again . . . but you can't catch a fish without wiggling the bait. "I would never have expected you to keep that body. How does it feel, being pinned to the physical?" 

" **You would know, wouldn't you? It's interesting as an exercise, but I'm glad I don't have to maintain it for much longer.** " There was a long pause. On the astral, a tangle of necks and heads writhed. " **Out with it.** " 

"With what, Lord?" Fuck, I was going to gag if I had to call him that too many times. 

" **Since you aren't simply throwing yourself on my mercy, there must be something you want. Had you forgotten? I created you. I know how your mind works. What is it? Amnesty for your allies?** " 

_You know how my mind_ worked, I corrected with an inward sneer that I couldn't let sneak out. Physicality, dying, being mated . . . they'd all changed me on levels even I didn't completely understand. 

"That's part of it," I said. _Come on, you bastard, just a couple of steps forward . . ._ "It's more than just my immediate allies, you understand, Lord. This entire area—" I waved my hand in a broad gesture. "—Seyruun and its allies . . . I've begun to build up something of a power base here, and I don't want the others meddling." I gave Grau a glare, as though to imply it was Dynast I was particularly worried about. 

Ruby-Eye chuckled. " **I must admit, you seem to have drawn in some very interesting people. A dragon paladin and priestess, and that peculiar pet of yours. I've never seen a mortal with that level of power before—exactly what did you do to it?** " 

"He sought a lot of that out on his own. Val's convinced himself he's in love with me, you see, Lord." I'd warned everyone in advance that I was going to be lying like a rug here, but that still hurt to say. "He wants to be as strong as possible in order to offer me better support. Fuck, he nearly succeeded in ripping the world to pieces on his own. Xellos would be able to tell you more about that incident than I can, though." 

" **Oh?** " 

I offered a smirk and a shrug. "He was on the other side. I was kind of in cold storage. As for the rest of these, they trust me to protect them. For a while, anyway." 

" **Hmm.** " 

"I also have access to the sorceress Lina Inverse—the one who killed a different portion of you, Lord, and Hellmaster as well. Seyruun will hand her over to me in return for peace." 

" **Xellos? What do you think?** " 

"Well, now." The slimy little cone made a show of thinking hard. I forced myself to look calm. No fist-clenching, holding of my breath, or getting twitchy on the astral. Then he smiled widely and said, "It could be true, I suppose. The two golden dragons he brought along are known to be . . . flexible . . . about dealing with Mazoku. The Seyruunese royals would have to have lost their minds, but they were always right on the edge of that even without Mazoku help. Although I would have expected you to break the ward in the capital . . . Gaav- _sama_." 

I snorted. "You need strategy lessons, not just etiquette. We can't make it too obvious _yet_ to all the humans just what they're allying themselves with. Besides, the ward at the capital is pretty fucking pathetic. It can't even reliably keep Red Imps out, much less any real Mazoku." 

I was starting to think I was going to need to talk all day before I could get Ruby-Eye to relax enough to step inside the ward. And talking's never been my strongest suit. I'd been hoping he wouldn't be so wary, that he'd just think the damned thing was a reasonable precaution on my part and leave it at that. With him playing hard-to-get, there wasn't much I could do except stall. 

Ruby-Eye stared at me for several long moments, on the physical _and_ the astral (with several more heads involved on the second layer). Then he took a slow step forward, with Grau following close behind. Xellos hung back. I hoped that was because he'd been ordered to play rear-guard, and that he didn't give the whole thing away. For that matter, I hoped the mortals didn't give the whole thing away—they'd been told not to look at us, but Milgazia was the only one I would bet on having the self-discipline to do it. Val was supposed to signal them to start the spell. 

I could feel my little dragon's tension along the mate-bond even with the ward sending static along my nerves. He was past ready for this to start. He was also trained to handle that tension, and seemed to be bearing up under it without too much strain. 

Dear Old Dad took another couple of steps forward. He and Grau were both inside the ward now, but only just. _Don't hold your breath, don't grit your teeth, don't twitch on the astral . . . trust Val to get the timing right._ It was the _trust_ part that was most difficult, really. It wasn't something I'd ever done a lot of, and without Val I doubted I would have been able to bring myself to set up the plan the way I had. 

Still, I was being maybe just a little too passive—suspicious in and of itself. "I wouldn't have thought that this—" I made a waving gesture that took in the entire area. "—would be enough to make you nervous, Lord." 

" **It's . . . uncomfortable. Although perhaps not as much as . . . normal. The body seems to be shielding us somewhat. Interesting.** " 

"Sorry about the precautions, but I knew I wasn't exactly going to be dealing from a position of strength." I slid down off the rock block I'd been sitting on and took a step of my own toward him. 

Ruby-Eye smirked. The expression looked all wrong on Taben's face. " **I didn't create you to be stupid.** " 

I shrugged. It was one of the few things he could have said that I actually agreed with. 

" **Although you weren't the one supposed to be doing the brain work,** " he added, and chuckled as I scowled. " **But with Phibrizzo gone, I suppose I'll have to make use of what's available. Come here, Gaav. Present yourself properly.** " 

Well, then. Three more steps, and I went down on one knee just within arm's reach of him. _That's the signal if everything seems to be going well,_ I'd told Val. _If it doesn't . . . use your judgement._

Val made a broad gesture, waving his arm, and as smoothly as though we'd been able to practice it (which we hadn't), power began to surge through the ward as Milgazia dumped a bunch of his extra into it. The prickling over my skin intensified, and I reached out to grab Val with my mind, preparing to teleport. 

And that was when everything suddenly went wrong. 

I'd expected Ruby-Eye to rear back in shock. Instead, his astral form trembled, shifting around just slightly. Outside the ward. And inside with me were a slimy cone, his form reverting to his own with a sudden _pop!_ as he gave me an apologetic look, and oh, fuck, that wasn't Grau either. 

"Long time no see, _big_ brother," Dynast said. He didn't bother to drop his subordinate's form—he'd always cared less about physical appearances than me or Zelas—but it was impossible to mistake him for Grau when I could see his personality leaking through. 

"You knew." _Stall,_ I told myself. More time might bring a slim improvement in our chances, an opportunity for Val or Milgazia or even the Inverse sisters to think of something. 

"Father suspected. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the dragon boyfriend. That's a hell of a lot of Ceiphied's power to cram inside one mortal creature, you know. I'd heard rumours, but this is my first time seeing him in person. Difficult to believe he'd ever follow our agenda . . . except in an attempt to avenge you, which I understand is more or less what happened the first time." 

Two voices, chanting in Ryugo, drove the ward suddenly higher, twisting the local section of the astral even further out of true. Dynast swore and staggered. I grinned and once more latched onto the mate-bond with my mind. Milgazia had come through this time—he'd realized that since Taben had never entered the ward in the first place, there was no reason not to pull out all the stops. Taking Dynast out of the game wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind, but we'd at least be accomplishing something. 

I bent space around me . . . and then staggered as something pulled it straight again. 

" **Surely you didn't think it would be that easy.** " And that was Ruby-Eye's true voice, a subtle shade different from Xellos' imitation, with undertones of the wind off the Sea of Chaos itself. 

Dynast picked that second to take a swing at me with a sword that was also a taloned appendage. I spun to the left on the physical while scrabbling for balance on the distorted astral, yanking my sword from its scabbard. _Shit!_ This was really bad—about the worst possible failure scenario. I was _inside_ the ward and couldn't get out, and Ruby-Eye was _outside_ with a bunch of vulnerable mortals he could turn into dust at any moment. Even Dynast couldn't be eliminated without my getting caught in the crossfire. Failure on all possible levels. Never mind taking out any of the other side's pieces: I was going to be lucky if I could salvage all of my own. 

Fighting Dynast under these circumstances was a waste of time, and Xellos hadn't actually _done_ anything yet, just standing off and waiting for the outcome, so I made a move that hopefully neither of them would be expecting: I attacked my own side, slamming a full-force blow into the ward, then another, and dodging Dynast so that he hit it in the same spot for the finale. It hadn't been meant to hold up under the concentrated attack of a Dark Lord not being distracted by some other spell, and I rolled free of the temple's foundations as it shattered. 

One of the dragons was keening like a hatchling, but I knew it wasn't Val, so I ignored it. Now that I had the space, I yanked more of my substance through from the astral and let my body bulk up into its proper form. Dynast, likewise, dropped Grau's favoured human simulation and took on his true form, or as close as he could come in the physical world. I snorted. The powerful, broad-shouldered figure might have looked intimidating to a human, but he was barely nine feet tall—smaller than the smallest white dragon. Although I'd have had to be a fool to underestimate him just because of that. 

Ruby-Eye, however, remained as and where he was, with his true body confined to the astral. It was a gesture of contempt. He didn't believe I was a threat. Well, let him. The less wary he was, the easier it would be for me to do . . . something. 

I swatted at Dynast, whose talons met mine with a loud _skreee!_ At the same time, I whipped my left head around and breathed at Xellos, aiming for a close miss. Without missing a beat, the slimy cone pulled out of the physical plane entirely and dove into the deeper layers of the astral. Once, I might have been able to figure out where he was going without taking my attention off my two massively dangerous opponents, and I cursed Ragradia, but there was nothing I could do beyond hoping that the Beast-Priest didn't make my problems any worse. 

Then Ruby-Eye made a gesture, and some bushes along the hillside shook. A moment later, a shit-ton of trolls came pouring out. Under other circumstances, it might almost have been funny. I mean, I could squish two or three of them with every step, so completely that even their accelerated healing couldn't fix it, and they couldn't so much as scratch me. Calling them cannon fodder was more than they deserved. 

But. 

Have you ever tried to fight in a room full of mice? They get underfoot and mess up your balance even though they go _crunch-squish_ when you step on them. And you can't tell whether a flicker of movement seen from the corner of your eye is your opponent or some random rodent. In other words, they're a fucking nuisance and they make everything ten times harder than it needs to be. 

With real mice, it's as distracting for your opponent as it is for you, so it isn't so bad. These trolls, though . . . on the astral, it was possible to tell them apart from humans. _If_ your astral senses were working properly, like Dynast's surely were . . . and mine, of course, weren't. That was a problem. Not that I gave a flying fuck about humans in general, but if Princess Amelia didn't survive this, I'd lose much of my pathetic cobbled-together powerbase. So I had one white mouse that I absolutely could not step on or let anyone else step on either, mixed in with a roomful of brown fieldmice. Which meant I had to spend an instant identifying each tiny kinda-humanoid anyone was interacting with before I could decide what to do with it, instead of just stomping around indiscriminately. It was a handicap I had to get rid of fast or it was going to kill me. 

"Milgazia!" I roared from my left head, breathing streams of firey hell from the other two that were carefully calculated not to intersect with anything nearby. "Get the humans out of here!" 

"Ah-ah-ah!" Xellos said, waggling his forefinger in admonishment. "Ruby-Eye-sama has specified that no one is to be permitted to leave." 

I slapped him to the ground and pinned him there with my talons. But even that turned out to be a mistake, because it pinned _me_ in one location. Which meant that, when Ruby-Eye's attack came, I couldn't dodge in time. 

I snarled when the Staff of Bone, which I hadn't even noticed he was holding, expanded into a gigantic spear and pierced my chest in exactly the spot where Phibby's long-ago attack had gone in. Thinking quickly, I twisted, willing to tear the wound wider if it meant that Ruby-Eye lost his grip on the weapon and couldn't make it _deeper_. And breathed another shot at Dynast to make him keep his distance. 

But twisting meant I had to let Xellos go, and the slimy little cone threw some trolls flying and ran toward an altercation on the edge of our battlefield. I couldn't spare much attention for it, but one of my heads had a good enough angle to see trolls and Lina Inverse and her idiot husband and the chimera, with Taben's sister shrunken into a little knot at the center of the group and Luna Inverse fending off anything that tried to drop onto them from above. _Fuck!_ Losing the chimera might also tear my powerbase into little pieces, and forcing Lina Inverse to use her full power at the cost of her child would . . . fuck, I wasn't even sure what it would do, but it might send her into an orgy of suicidal vengeance shit comparable only to what Val had tried to do. Why the fuck had I let her come along in the first place? That had been a mistake, and being irritated and pressed for time was no excuse. 

Milgazia, now in full dragon form, had the princess and the Sylphiel-woman on his back and was plunging his way forward through the trolls, but even Xellos could wipe him out without much effort. I had to make sure that didn't happen. Val had come tearing down the hill and was engaging Dynast using hit-and-run tactics. Well, more like hit-and-squish. There seemed to be an endless number of trolls getting in the way. 

Three heads wasn't enough to watch everything I wanted to keep track of. Even if I trusted Val fully and forced myself to look away from him and Dynast, that left two enemies and two groups of allies. Four heads' worth. The only way I was going to keep from losing track of them was to get Milgazia over to that fucking lame-duck sorceress, and both of them off the battlefield. 

I used two heads to sear a path for him through the wadded-up trolls. Risky, but half-measures weren't going to work. The third head I kept on Ruby-Eye, still the largest threat, although he seemed determined to continue hiding behind his human facade. Xellos . . . I tried to keep Xellos in the corner of one eye or another. It was the best I could do. 

Suddenly, a pile of rubble over near the temple foundations stirred and erupted into the air, revealing a slender young golden dragon in her native form. Her eyes glittered with rage as she spoke in an ominous tone. "Garbage Mazoku, I know you're here!" 

Even the trolls seemed to pause in mid-motion as she raked the battlefield with her gaze, then leaped forward and reached down into a troll-pile. She pulled out Xellos, who was trying to look apologetic and harmless even as he dangled from her talons. 

"Oh, my, I'm sorry, Filia-chan—I didn't realize it was me you meant!" 

"You knew _exactly_ , you garbage! Why do you keep doing this to me?!" Her eyes were shiny now . . . the fuck? Was she going to burst into tears in the middle of the fucking battle with the Beast-Priest dangling from her hand? The stupidity of it was enough to take my breath away. 

Xellos rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, now . . ." 

"Kill her and stop wasting time!" Dynast snapped, nearly eating the tip of Val's lance in the process. 

Xellos' eyes snapped open, and the expression on his face was weird, even for him. "I . . ." His hands twitched. Fuck, was he actually breaking free of Beastmaster, shielded by the temporary physical body the Knight of Ceiphied had given him? No, that must have evaporated by now, or he wouldn't have been able to pull back into the astral, earlier. " . . . I'm sorry, Filia-chan." 

He cracked her knuckles with his staff and twisted in midair as her talons spasmed open, a purplish ball of energy crackling in the palm of his hand. 

" _Dragon Slave!_ " 

The unexpected spell slammed into Xellos and knocked him tumbling, although it didn't do him more than superficial damage. What confused me was that even if Lina Inverse had decided to risk her child by casting Ruby-Eye's spell, that hadn't been her voice. I followed the line of the spell back and found . . . the Flare Carrot Priestess, Sylphiel, standing upright on Milgazia's back. 

I was starting to think I'd fallen sideways into another universe, or maybe that I was having some fucking weird dream. But neither of those things was going to stop me from winning this fight, especially when it was starting to look like we _could_ win. 

Since it looked like the mortals could handle their major opponent by themselves, I turned most of my attention back to Ruby-Eye, where it should have been all along. Two heads' worth of sun's-heart fire should at least force him to abandon that shell of a body. And then I'd tear the real him apart. I just needed to— 

_Pain!_ Sudden red tearing pain, running from my chest to between the bases of my wings. I reared back, roaring, and discovered that something had jammed the Staff of Bone in much deeper, until it emerged on the other side of my body. 

I looked down and found a slender figure wearing leather armour with a wolfskin cape thrown over the top of it, the head covering her helm and the eyes moving as though they were alive. Which they were, more or less. In her left hand, she held an incongruously slender sword. 

I hadn't seen Zelas in her human-form battle armour in a very long time, and I'd have been a lot happier if I hadn't been seeing it now. 

"You understand," she said, and yeah, I did. She had to do what Ruby-Eye told her, or have her entire being torn apart. "He doesn't want you dead," she added. 

"Just broken," I finished for her. "Well, he can go for a swim in the fucking Sea of Chaos." And then I roared again as teeth and talons dug into my back—on the astral, where I was most vulnerable. I could feel power, red-black-foreign, searing into my veins like acid, trying to burn away what I'd become and return me to merely what I once had been. I swiped at Ruby-Eye—on the physical, the astral, I hardly knew anymore—and although my talons scored flesh, I knew I wasn't harming anything important. 

_I'm sorry, Val. You might end up having to carry out that last wish I gave you after all._


	38. Val

Pain flooded me, the mate bond twisting and thrashing inside my psyche. I'd thought it had been bad when Gaav had died and he'd been torn out of me, but this . . . this was an attempt to turn him into something that couldn't share this kind of connection with me without destroying us both, and part of my subconscious was trying to rip me loose while the other part hung on just as frantically. 

The sound I made was half roar and half scream. My wings rose from my back in an explosion of black feather-scales, and I hurled myself into the air, frantic to get to my mate. 

"Oh, no, you don't." 

Something nearly sliced into me from behind, but instincts scraped raw by pain warned me just in time to allow me to twist in midair and bring Khirr up to block Dynast's talons. 

"What do you think you're doing?" the Dark Lord of the frozen north asked, sounding quite conversational. "I'm your opponent, or had you forgotten?" 

"Were you? I didn't see your name on my dance card," I spat back—which I guess proves that I was pretty far unhinged, because I'm not usually all that big on witty repartee in the middle of a fight. I leave that for people like Lina Inverse. 

"I must have forgotten to sign it." Dynast had a lot of very sharp teeth in this form—black and easily a foot long, and I suppose his grin was supposed to look intimidating. Maybe it would have, to a human . . . but my own teeth, in my natural form, were bigger than his. 

I growled at him and lashed out with my foot. He was easily three feet taller than I was, but I knew very well how to fight someone larger than I was while wearing my human form. The only catch was that Dynast's Mazoku form was armoured with thick, spiky plates of patterned black bone, and a single misjudgement might drive my flesh onto those spikes. 

It felt like my kick hit a brick wall, but I could sense the twitch on the astral, and knew I'd startled him. I didn't wait for him to recover, but waded straight in, attacking him with the speed typical of Mazoku fights, doing my best to mix physical and astral strikes in no particular pattern. 

_Think!_ I told myself. Pain was still tearing at me, but I knew how to think through pain. And given what I'd paid for those lessons, I was damned well going to use them. Dynast . . . who was Dynast? The fourth-strongest Dark Lord, superior only to Deep-Sea Dolphin. He had a hard time keeping good subordinates, due to a combination of micromanaging, thoughtlessness, and aggressively killing off anyone he considered less than perfect. In the old days, a lot of the lesser Mazoku who had gravitated to Gaav had previously worked for Dynast. _Arrogant. Not adaptable._ But not entirely stupid, either. 

A spiked tail whipped out from under the cape he was wearing and raked my leg. It only left shallow cuts, but I snarled as I felt hot rivulets of blood begin to run down my calf and soak into my trousers. Well, two could play at that game! I let my own tail free, whipping at him savagely. If it hit, it might smash one of those stupid armour plates, and if he dodged, he was going to have an encounter with my foot, then with Khirr's main blade. 

And then, out of nowhere, I seemed to hear the sound of bone crunching, and felt a sharp pain in my neck. I reeled back, away from Dynast, choking even though I should have been able to breathe just fine. Dragon voices thundered pain, anger, defiance as I touched my throat. My fingers found no damage, gliding over smooth skin. I spun, saw one of Gaav's necks bent up and back in an unnatural position by jaws that only existed on the astral . . . and was immediately hit in the stomach by a spiked knee. 

I was thrown backward ten feet, smashing into (and just plain smashing) a troll. I immediately got back up, wiping away the trickle of blood that had appeared at the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand, although it was kind of a waste of time when I couldn't do anything for the mess the troll had left all over my back. 

_I screwed up._ Gaav would have chewed me out, and rightly so, for letting myself get distracted from the enemy I was facing, but with my mate's agony twisting in my body and brain, it wasn't like I could help it. 

"I told you," the Dark Lord said. "You're fighting me. Did you really think I'd let you free yourself up and go to your master's defense?" 

I sneered at him. "I never asked you to _let_ me do anything. Don't underestimate me." 

Dynast laughed. " _Underestimate_ you? You're just a dragon. A mortal. If it weren't for Ruby-Eye-sama's orders, I'd wipe you out with a wave of my hand." 

I channeled more power into Khirr, and its blades expanded, crackling with black-gold power. 

"That weapon is the most interesting thing about you," Dynast added, with a cruel smile. 

"Then I hope you like how it tastes!" I spun the lance hand over hand. It was nothing more than a flashy distraction, but Dynast might not know that if he hadn't studied how to handle a double-ended lance, specifically. The real attack would come from elsewhere. The whole thing was a stupid sleight-of-hand trick . . . but really, that was why it worked against overconfident people. And Dynast wasn't nearly as suspicious as Xellos. 

You don't have to use your hands as the point of projection for a spell. It can be any part of your body, although it's usually better to pick a part that doesn't put clothes in the way. The breath-weapon-augmenting spells used by some dragons, which focus through the mouth, are the most common example, but there's no reason you can't use, say, the tip of your tail. I curved mine low around my left calf, and began muttering words under my breath and attacking Dynast's face and shoulders so that he wouldn't look down. It would have been an awkward coordination exercise at the best of times, and with part of me panicking over Gaav and the pain flowing along the mate-bond, it also became an exercise in endurance. 

" . . . infinite," I muttered, then grinned, baring all my teeth, and added, barely louder, "Ra Tilt." 

A human using that spell against a Dark Lord would just have made the target laugh, but my astral body was much larger and denser than a human's, and infected with Ceiphied's power to boot. It wouldn't kill him, but it was certainly going to hurt. 

It struck him right in the breastbone and threw him through the air, smashing him into a whole group of trolls. The savage grin stayed on my face as I launched myself into the air again, headed for Gaav and Ruby-Eye. 

I didn't get very far before something grabbed me and slammed me to the ground (and onto more trolls—my clothes were so thick with mashed troll that I was going to have to burn them). I looked down, but there was nothing there until I switched my attention to the astral, where I found a tail coiled around my ankle. 

"Are you stupid?" Dynast asked. He wasn't smiling now. One of his chest plates was dull and cracked, and his cape was sodden with smashed troll. "I told you, you're fighting _me_." 

_No, I'm fighting Ruby-Eye. You're just a fucking foot soldi—_

Red lightning blistered paths along my skin—another attack from the astral. 

_Val, you have to let go! Val—_

"Like hell I will!" I snarled at the sound of my mate's voice inside my head. "If you're going to hell, _I'm going with you!_ I promised myself—never again—" 

This time the pull on the mate-bond was more deliberate, a twist and a hard jerk. It didn't do much, but three or four more of those and something was going to give. And it wasn't Ruby-Eye doing it. It was Gaav. I could tell. He was fighting to sever our link. Unwilling to listen to anything I had to say. 

I think Dynast hit me again at that point, but I barely noticed until I smashed into a troll that had been in the process of regenerating, and turned it into mincemeat. I was fighting inside, fighting to hold on, but I just wasn't strong enough. 

"Losing your mind?" the Dark Lord asked. "I suppose that will speed things up. It's a pity that Gaav's so preoccupied, though. I was looking forward to seeing the look in his eyes when you were torn apart right in front of him . . . and tasting your emotions when you realized that they were . . . utterly . . . empty." He laughed and stepped forward, kicking a troll's head out of the way. 

I tried to get my feet under me, but I ended up slipping on ground now muddy from the guts and blood of smashed trolls. I toppled backward, barely keeping hold of Khirr. 

My hand came down inches from a broken stone wall. Some white was still visible through the spatters of troll blood. 

My grin this time was more of a rictus, but I forced my hand to move those few inches and flatten itself against the stones of the ward. 

It was like being slammed in the face with a Dragon Slave, except that I could tell this wasn't Mazoku power—quite the opposite. I could taste a hint of rotting dragon-god as light burst from my skin and I instantly, involuntarily, returned to my true form. This time, though, I didn't back away from the stones. There was power here, and I was going to use it even if it broke me. 

By an act of will, I managed to channel some of that power into the breath weapon energy locus behind my breastbone. It felt like I had a live coal lodged right where the passages from my lungs came together. 

I raised my neck and breathed it out. 

A bolt of pure white light sizzled through the air, piercing both the physical and the astral to strike Ruby-Eye. Several of his heads let out a startled roar, but I didn't have time to savour my victory, because I was coming to an unpleasant realization. 

I couldn't lift the foreleg touching the wall. That energy was crawling _into_ me and holding my flesh to the stone. If I flicked my perceptions into the astral, I could see it surging and ebbing in thick rivers under my skin, spreading always a little further, a little brighter. I couldn't tell how far up my neck it was, but I was willing to bet it would be hitting my head soon. 

I spat another bolt of white, hoping to slow the spread and give myself some time to think, but it only helped for a couple of seconds. There was this, though: everyone was staring at me. Including Ruby-Eye. Which meant that he wasn't torturing my mate. 

And then the energy reached my head, and everything went crazy. 

I was dangling in some dark, endless space, supported by a handful of . . . strings made of light, I guess you would call them, since beams don't curve. The thickest one, anchored somewhere so deep inside my chest that I couldn't tell where it ended, burned red with my mate's familiar power, but there was another almost as thick. That one was blue, and seemed to be trying to worm itself into a spot between the bases of my wings. It was also pulling in the opposite direction from the red one. And there were four finer strings, orange, deep gold, silver-green, and pure white. Those were hanging slack, but they all tended in the same general direction as the blue. 

So where in hell were they all coming from? I twisted my neck, followed the red thread up . . . and up . . . and jerked my head in surprise. 

I was dangling below a gigantic, glowing representation of the double-lobed version of the Planes Chart. A gigantic, _detailed_ representation. Normal ones that you see on paper show the Sea of Chaos, the five true Dragon Gods and five master Dark Lords, and then the lesser Dragon Gods and Dark Lords under Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye respectively. This one went further, dangling smaller and smaller Mazoku sigils off that side until they became too tiny to see from my current location. Actually, I was willing to bet that every single true immortal, living or dead, was represented on there somewhere. Phibrizzo's sigil was greyed out, although a few of the lesser ones dangling from it still glowed brightly. Rashatt and Raltaak, Gaav's original General and Priest, also existed as faint grey dangling symbols, and I would have bet that if I'd gotten closer and poked around a bit, I could have found Kanzel and Mazenda and all the rest. Ruby-Eye's sigil wasn't grey, but it flickered fitfully—maybe that was what happened when you were one-seventh dead, courtesy of Lina Inverse. 

Gaav's sigil was surprisingly bright, and had little flickering flashes of gold arcing from its surface as though it had been hit by a Digger Bolt spell. It was also out of position, off to the side, with the strings of light binding it to the other Mazoku sigils pulled taut. They looked like they were starting to fray. Only the red cord binding him to me was strong and bright. 

The blue cord went . . . I traced it with my eyes, and boggled when I found the other end. Why the hell was I connected to Ragradia's sigil, and why were there fitful little flashes of light running through the grey? And the other, thinner strings connected to the other Dragon Gods' sigils, including Ceiphied's—that was the white one. 

I had a really bad feeling about this. 

And that was before the blue cord tightened and started to pull harder, putting strain on the red. 

The way the blue cord was sunk into me made it difficult to get at with my talons, so I craned my neck through the full hundred and eighty degrees and bit at it. My jaws closed on nothing. I snarled and breathed at it instead, and that parted a few strands. It was going to take a while to make it snap at that rate, and I didn't know how the passage of time wherever I was related to that in the real world, but I didn't have much choice. 

I wasn't going to let it pull me away from my mate. 

Another breath did a little more damage. Too bad I couldn't fire my breath weapon continuously, but it needed a few seconds to recharge. 

"Why do you resist?" An unfamiliar voice, neither loud nor soft, masculine nor feminine . . . actually, it didn't have much in the way of qualities that I could put my talon on at all. 

"Why the hell wouldn't I?" I snapped. "I never volunteered to join the Dragon Gods' side. Find yourselves another prospective Water Dragon King." 

I'd hoped that the voice would immediately tell me that I was wrong about that, but instead I got, "Is it truly such a horrible thought? We do have enemies in common." 

Cold slithered down my dorsal ridge. It was immediately followed by a hot pulse of rage. 

"Not good enough," I snapped. "And show yourself. I hate talking to disembodied voices." 

"Very well." 

Light flared from one of the sigils on the Dragon Gods' side of the array, and a silvery form dropped down from it, unfurling his wings. Broad, feathered wings. He looked like a member of my own race, except for being too big and the wrong colour. 

"Valwin." I identified him from the sigil, and from descriptions Gaav had given me. 

"Val Ul Copt," he greeted me in return. His voice had changed once he had taken on an avatar: still light, but clearly masculine. 

"It's 'Valgaav'," I snapped, although I had never intended to use that name again. It was just the quickest way I could think of to get him to acknowledge what I had been. What I still was, in many ways, and would always be. 

"My apologies. Valgaav." His eyebrow feathers scrunched slightly in distaste as he spoke the name, though. 

"Did the other two assholes send you as a representative because they thought I'd have a soft spot for the god that abandoned my species to be slaughtered?" I wasn't about to give him time to catch his breath. 

"I volunteered. I wanted to speak to you, and to apologize." 

"Apologize?" I sneered. "You think _that's_ going to make up for anything?" 

"No, but it is the only thing I can do." 

"Bullshit," I said savagely. "Killing yourself would be a start. Killing Vrabazard for not disciplining his priest would be better. All he had to do was send a few fucking dreams to the appropriate people. He didn't even have to lift a talon to intervene directly! You—all three of you—are murderers." 

"Is that why you will not join us?" 

I laughed in his face. "Are you kidding me? I spent centuries working with Mazoku—and a lot of them were the worst kind of turncoat Mazoku scum, at that. The blood on your hands wouldn't be enough to make me refuse you if I wanted to join up. No, there are two reasons. One is that this crap you're pulling seems to be designed to separate me from my mate. I won't have that." 

"You will not be prevented from seeing him," Valwin said, but his grimace of distaste was much clearer this time. 

"Bullshit. You'll do it very carefully, so that it isn't obvious, but you'll try to separate us. I'd bet you hate Gaav more than any other being in the universe except Ruby-Eye—more than you hate Dynast or Dolphin or Beastmaster. After all, Gaav was the one who killed Ragradia. You hate the others because it's your nature, but with Gaav, I'd bet it's personal." 

Valwin didn't try to deny it. "And the other reason?" 

"Simple: _you didn't ask_. I'm not a fucking gamepiece, and I _will not_ be pushed around. Pretty sad that the Air Dragon King has less respect for mortals' free will than the Chaos Dragon, isn't it?" 

Valwin looked away from me, up at the Planes Chart, where the Water Dragon King's sigil had gone dark again. 

"You do realize that the power you now enjoy is due to your connection with us. If you sever it, your power will dwindle back to what it was before you broke through." 

I bared my fangs at him. "If I can't use that power freely, then it's worthless to me. You can take it and shove it up your cloaca." 

Judging from his expression, I'd finally managed to offend him. Well, good. 

I turned and breathed at the rope of fire binding me to the Water Dragon King's sigil again, and this time, it parted cleanly. The lesser bonds holding me to the other Dragon Gods snapped, leaving me dangling from my mate-bond, swinging slowly back and forth below Gaav's sigil as the whole vision began to fade. 

I braced myself, knowing I was going to get dropped straight back into the battle. Except that I wasn't, quite. 

I returned to my senses in the real world in the same place, with the glow still fading around me, but the battle had stopped. The trolls were gone, at least the ones that could still move, and Dynast was staring at me with an unnerved expression on his face. Further away, Ruby-Eye had gotten off Gaav's back and was staring in my direction. Or at least, I thought he was. It was certainly what he was doing on the astral, but he was still wearing a rather small, human, physical body. 

"The entire world has gone insane," Dynast said, and glared at me. "Who are you really?" 

I offered him a savage smile. "The last of the ancient dragons," I said.


	39. Filia

Sensing Xellos' . . . _Xellos-ness_ while I'd been too thoroughly pinned by rubble and dead trolls for my human form to move had been bad enough. 

Hearing that _sorry_ of his and seeing his eyes open and the ball of energy flower in his hand was worse. I just couldn't believe it. _Sorry_ wasn't something that he ever said and _meant_ it, and attacking me with his powers was like me attacking him with spells or my breath weapon: it violated everything I'd thought I knew about our relationship. 

Xellos was supposed to be a . . . a _scraped knee_ sort of evil, and he'd suddenly metamorphosed into a fatal sword wound. Oh, I mean, I'd always known what he was, his identity and reputation, but he'd never really turned his power against us—against his _friends_. If he had, how could any of us have survived? 

I went on staring at the space where he'd been for what felt like a really long time after Sylphiel had knocked him flying. 

_He's got a thing for you,_ Val had said, somewhere in the comparatively mild tumult of several hours ago. I wasn't sure whether I believed that or not, but the look in Xellos' eyes when he'd opened them had been terrible. Like something inside him had been snuffed out. 

He didn't really want to do this. I was sure of that. He didn't really want to do this, but he had no choice, because he'd been commanded by a Mazoku more powerful than himself, who had authority over him. 

Xellos was a slave. It was the first time I'd really understood that. A trusted slave, a privileged slave with authority among his own kind, but his free will was still something he had to wiggle into the cracks between his orders. I'd known that, too, but I hadn't really understood until now what it meant. No freedom to refuse. The dead look in his eyes . . . 

I _pitied_ him, I realized suddenly. I'd never felt that way before. All that power, and yet he didn't have something that should have been the right of every thinking being, even Mazoku. I'd heard Gaav talk about the magically-enforced bond between a junior Mazoku and the one that had spawned it, but at the time I'd barely registered the expressions that had chased themselves across his face, much less understood them. Hatred, and the tiniest spark of fear that had glittered in those blue eyes for a moment before vanishing again. 

I wouldn't have thought the Chaos Dragon feared anything. Not even death, given that he'd experienced it and somehow come out the other side in one piece. It just went to show how terrible that restriction on the Mazoku really was. 

But why was I think about Gaav when I was worried about the gar—about Xellos? I swung my head around and spotted him fastidiously brushing squashed troll off his clothes, although how he was getting it to actually come off when everyone else was covered in muck was a mystery to me. If his clothes had been self-cleaning then the stuff shouldn't have been clinging to them at all . . . if they were actually clothes. Which I wasn't sure about, come to think of it. 

I shook my head frantically. No, no, no! I was letting myself get distracted again. But really, what was I supposed to do? If Xellos couldn't find some way out of this himself, what was _I_ supposed to do? I mean, I know I'm not the most subtle person. And I'm not as good at people as I thought I was before I met Lina. But there had to be someone here who could help. And I had to figure it out while Xellos was stalling, which, I realized belatedly, was what he was trying to do. 

Milgazia was trying to fight his way free of the trolls for long enough to take to the air, and Gaav was fighting . . . something on the astral, I had to assume, because it looked like he was snapping and clawing at the air, but it was clear he was getting something between his jaws now and again. Val was fighting with someone who matched the descriptions of Dynast from the texts I'd studied in the old days at the temple. 

Come to think of it, that was who had given the order to Xellos, wasn't it? Not Beastmaster or Shabranigdo. Not one of his direct ancestors. So Dynast's authority over him couldn't be absolute. Which meant Beastmaster might be able to call him off . . . ? But there was no way I'd make it all the way to Wolf Pack Island with Xellos in pursuit . . . 

Suddenly, Val made a terrible noise, and any thought of Xellos fled my head for a second as I whipped around and saw my ex-foster-son clawing at his throat with one hand. Even though there was nothing wrong with his neck that I could see. Then he turned, a pained motion, and when I followed his line of sight, I saw Gaav, with one of his necks bent back in an unnatural way. Broken. Whatever the Chaos Dragon was fighting had broken one of his necks, and Val was feeling it. 

Who was that there on the ground, in front of one of those red-taloned feet? The figure looked human, which was weird, because they didn't seem to match anyone who had come here with us. Certainly not a troll, anyway. Another Mazoku? I sidled closer. Xellos was still brushing off his clothes, and Dynast was engaged with Val and not paying any attention to me. That little figure was female. And it felt like . . . felt oddly like . . . 

She turned her head slowly, and while not much was visible past her helmet, I did catch the glow of slit-pupilled amber eyes. Mazoku, yes, since no dragon I'd ever met had eyes quite that colour. 

In that frozen second where we stared at each other, I got the oddest mental image of a baby Xellos lying asleep in her armoured lap, much as I'd once looked at an enraged dragon-Mazoku hybrid and heard a hatchling crying. Never mind that Xellos had never really been a baby. This woman dressed in leather armour and a wolfskin had to be Beastmaster Zelas Metallium. I just knew somehow. Feminine intuition. Or a gift from the Dragon Gods. 

I drew in a breath to yell something to her, but ended up letting it out in a shrill scream of shock instead as a white flash blotted out the world. 

A wave of divine power swept through the area. It was like the power of Vrabazard that I had learned to touch as a priestess, but cool and wet instead of warm. Water, not fire. Ragradia? How? She was _dead_! Gaav had killed her in the terrible battle that had ended the Kouma War! The remnants she'd left behind only manifested around Claire Bible manuscripts, if Lina was to be believed—and only complete ones, at that! So how could her power be here? But I couldn't doubt my own senses, not when I could hear, not just the yells of the trolls, but Dynast snarling what had to be curses. I didn't understand the language, but the tone was very clear. 

"We should withdraw." A woman's voice, clearly audible above all the confusion. "We didn't plan for this, only for Gaav, his boy-toy, and their mortal allies." 

"That _is_ his boy-toy!" Dynast snarled. 

"And for all we know, he could be calling Valwin and the others here _right now_ ," the woman pointed out. "Two of them, we can take, but five is a bit much, don't you think?" 

" _Tch_ ," was all Dynast said in reply. 

"Shabranigdo-sama, we appeal to your wisdom," the woman said. "What is your decision?" 

A pause. My dazzled eyes were starting to recover, and through the spots I could see the Mazoku, Gaav included, frozen on the battlefield, and the trolls too. And over by the ruins of the temple, the figure of a dragon, with blue light shimmering from his dark scales. Val held his head high, but whatever his eyes were seeing, I didn't think it was the physical reality of the battlefield, with all the dead trolls and the churned mud underfoot. Milgazia—I whipped my head around and realized that I couldn't see Milgazia, and he was too big to be hiding behind one of the spots in front of my eyes. He must have gotten away during the moments where no one had been able to see what was happening. Which meant that Lina and the others, at least, were safe. 

" **Withdraw.** " The single word echoed over the battlefield. There was something disquieting about the quality of the voice. 

"As you will, Lord," said the woman. "Come, Xellos." She disappeared. I assume he did too, but I'd lost track of him after the flash. 

Val lifted his talons away from the temple's foundation wall, swaying slightly, and the light about him began to die, but the Mazoku and their trolls were already in full retreat. 

"The entire world has gone insane. Who are you really?" Dynast asked him, with an odd tone in his voice. 

Val bared his fangs. "The last of the ancient dragons." A single blue spark ran the length of his left wing and snapped from the tip. 

Dynast added something I didn't understand containing the name "Gaav". The Chaos Dragon responded with a deep chuckle and a comment of his own in what might have been the same language. Then the Lord of the North vanished. As far as I could tell, he was the last of our enemies to leave except for a few trolls, who fell immediately under Gaav's talons. 

Hopefully that made him feel better for a few seconds, because the renegade Dark Lord was clearly in a lot of pain, with his rightmost head still dangling from a snapped neck. Once he ran out of trolls, he sat back on his haunches and tried to straighten it with his talons, muttering rude words in Ryugo, the common language, and several others that I didn't recognize. Val went to help him, still not entirely steady on his feet. 

We three were the only ones left on the battlefield as Gaav used his power to splint his neck straight. Val waited until he was done before jumping down his throat with all four taloned feet. 

"Just what in _hell_ did you think you were doing?" 

"Just what the fuck did you think _you_ were doing?" the Dark Lord retorted from his two good heads—the third one seemed to be unconscious. 

"Trying to save _your_ hide!" 

"If you'd just let me—" 

" _Shut up,_ " Val growled, with enough force to make the ground vibrate. "You're not my master anymore, you're my mate. That means you don't get to unilaterally decide what's best and expect me to always go along with it. I promised myself that I would never let myself be separated from you again. That means I'm not going to go along with this new self-destruction fetish that you seem to have picked up somewhere. If you let Ruby-Eye drag you down into hell, I'm going there _with you_ , like it or not." 

"We agreed—" 

" _Like hell we did!_ You pronounced, and I kept my mouth shut because I thought our plan was reasonably solid and it wasn't worth arguing about the fringe cases! I know just how hard it is to make you listen when you're in a mood like that, and I wanted to save my energy for fighting Ruby-Eye, not you! Do you realize I just told _Valwin_ to piss off because I didn't want to be separated from you?!" 

Gaav's expression shifted. "I wondered about that," he said slowly. "I couldn't spare the attention to check what was going on, but I could feel the balance sloshing around." 

"They wanted to make me into the fucking _Water Dragon King,_ " Val said, his voice full of disgust. "I told them where to stuff the offer, but I'm not sure how well they listened. About as well as you, probably. You've got similar egos." He snorted, still glaring at his mate. 

"It makes sense," the Chaos Dragon said. "In a skewed kind of way. I'm living proof that it's possible for that kind of power to coexist with a mortal body—and so were you, at one point—but they couldn't just settle it on anyone. They needed someone who could accept that power and knew how to use it. It had to be a dragon, because greater dragons are closest to them in quality of power. In short, if they wanted someone to fill the position, you'd be perfect . . . if you had anyone but me for a mate." 

I was reeling. Val? Water Dragon King? He'd turned it _down_? 

"Although I'm surprised you didn't take him up on it for just long enough to tear all their throats out," Gaav added with a smirk, apparently relaxing again. 

"You're more important," Val said. "Although sometimes I wonder why I think that." By this time, he'd made his way over to Gaav, and unfurled a wing over his mate's back. 

"'Cause you think I'm sexy," Gaav retorted, and began to nibble along his mate's jaw with his leftmost head, and Val leaned into it, just a little. 

I blushed. Did they really have to go at it like that in public? Not that I expected Gaav to be capable of embarrassment, but I thought I'd raised Val better than that. So even if he hadn't understood in his previous life, he should this time around! 

"Mmnm. Well, you are that, but I don't think that's why." 

"Heh. Look, I'm not going to be able to change back until my neck's in one piece again, so we're going to have to head home just like this. Tell them that we'll be back in Seyruun in a few hours," Gaav added, his central head looking right at me. 

I blinked. Squeaked, "I didn't even know you knew I was here!" 

"Not being aware enough of my surroundings got me killed once," the Dark Lord pointed out with the mouth that wasn't busy licking Val's earhole. "It isn't going to happen again. You know how to get back to the castle, right? Or does Val need to give you a lift?" 

"I can fly from here," I said, my face still hot. "Thank you for offering." Except that he hadn't, really. "Is—" I blurted out, then stopped. 

"Hm?" Gaav wrinkled his brow ridges in inquiry. 

"Is my embarrassment tasty?" I asked, flushing even redder. 

"Not my preferred flavour, but I can't afford to give up a free meal right now. Bet it's exactly to Xellos' taste, though." 

I wanted to hit him, but I managed to hold onto a little bit of common sense. Instead, I leaped for the air. The bow on my tail, I realized, was stained beyond repair—unlike my priestess robes, it wasn't spelled for self-cleaning. I wanted to cry. I'd had that bow for years. But now it was a nasty sludgy brown instead of pretty pink. I'd have to get a new one. There had to be good fabric stores in Seyruun. Someone at the palace would know where. I could ask Amelia for help. 

About half an hour later, I landed on a drill field outside the palace and went inside. By then, I'd had time to think about all the unpleasant things that being angry at Gaav had kept from my mind. Xellos. I especially hadn't wanted to think about Xellos . . . but now I was _worried_ about the garbage Mazoku. I was starting to think there was something broken inside my head. 

I was talking to a servant who must have been rather slow in the head, since he didn't seem to know where _anyone_ was, when I heard a welcome voice. 

"Filia-san. So you're alright." Zelgadis was, as usual, very low-key. Right then, I could have hugged him. 

"Of course I am! But what about Lina and the baby and—" I cut myself off when I noticed the exasperated expression creeping over Zelgadis' face. 

"We all got out in one piece. Lina, the baby, Gourry, Amelia, Sylphiel . . . they're all fine. Milgazia got a bit singed around the edges, and he and Sylphiel and Amelia are pretty tired, that's all. It's Gaav we're worried about—and no, I can't believe I'm saying that." 

"He said he needed to stay in dragon form while his neck healed, and he and Val would be back here in a few hours," I said, and Zelgadis heaved a sigh of relief. 

"Well, that's one thing, anyway. Lina's champing at the bit to find out what happened. You know how she hates to be left out. And I'm a bit curious myself." 

I swallowed. "From what they said . . . the Dragon Gods chose Val to be the new Water Dragon King . . . and he turned them down." 

I didn't think I'd ever seen Zelgadis so surprised. His eyes went wide and he made a kind of gobbling sound. 

"We really have to talk to Lina," he said after he'd pulled himself together again. 

"I agree." Lina was smart. She'd be able to make some sense out of this.


	40. Gaav

I picked up my rightmost head carefully with my talons and laid it on the side of the hot pool I was soaking in, so that I wouldn't accidentally breathe any water. It would be another good half an hour before I trusted the bones of my neck to be solid enough to hold up their own weight, much less that of my head as well. At least the nerves had reconnected, so my coordination wasn't completely shot anymore. It was a really weird feeling, _knowing_ I'd moved my wing or my leg or my tail, but not having it actually move, and having to do it again. Especially since the glitches happened at random. 

Whether I'd lost any part of my consciousness while one of my heads had been disconnected . . . really, I wasn't sure. How would I know? By the time I'd been able to pause for mental self-evaluation, things were starting to hook up again. And I've never entirely understood _how_ my consciousness is shared between all three of my heads, only that it's seamless, and that pain is more likely to be passed on than actual malfunction. That is, if my left head gets concussed and starts seeing double, that doesn't mean the other two do too, but I'll feel the pain from whatever caused the concussion in all three. 

And apparently Val would too. I didn't like that one bit, but there didn't seem to be much I could do about it. The mate-bond couldn't be filtered, and there was no way in hell he'd let me break it. He'd already proven that. 

Currently, he was playing in one of the colder pools, ducking and snorting and fluffing his wings like a grumpy hatchling. It would have been funny to watch if he hadn't still been angry. Oh, not the flaring, totally-pissed-off, I'm-gonna-hit-you type of angry he had been when he'd chewed me out, but a low, smouldering anger I remembered well from the old days. Except that back then, it hadn't been aimed at me. 

I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I mean, emotional manipulation is part of the Mazoku stock-in-trade, but I'd always done it with concrete goals in mind. I wasn't sure how to proceed when what I wanted to accomplish was the creation of a specific emotional state that I wouldn't have been interested in with anyone but Val. 

I was actually thinking of just knuckling under, or trying to. Even though the act of surrender was utterly foreign to me, and I'd almost forgotten how to work in close quarters with an equal anyway. The last time had been with Zelas, during the Kouma War. 

But Val was worth it. I'd gone out of my way to do things for him so many times now that I'd lost count. Because I couldn't imagine life without him at my side. Because I . . . loved . . . him. Funny how I only had trouble with that word when I fully meant it. 

Not that there wasn't a logical reason for keeping him at my side, too. _Water Dragon King._ I was still processing that idea, even though, as I'd told him, it made logical sense. That he'd refused it still boggled a small part of me, but to the rest, that made sense, too. 

The Dragon Kings, like the Dark Lords, are slaves. Ceiphied's death made it more difficult to invoke the ties that had bound them to him, but they weren't gone. Someone else could rise in power to take over his position and renew the chains. 

With Ruby-Eye mostly on ice for the past thousand years, I'd forgotten just how difficult it was to fight that shit, like having red-hot hooks sunk into the core of my astral body and yanking me in the direction Dear Old Dad wanted me to go . . . In the old days, I'd always had to come to heel sooner or later, although there had been a couple of painful epic battles when I thought he'd given fucking stupid orders. Somehow, having a soul allowed me to keep from being dragged along at the end of the chain, although fighting the pull still hurt like a son of a bitch. There were times when I'd even thought he could read my mind across the connection, although I'd never been able to do that with any lesser Mazoku that I'd spawned. He'd just been a good guesser. 

The fear that I choked back and hid deep inside myself was the possibility that too much of that pain would break me. Like in those last few seconds when Phibby had been ripping me apart . . . I'd been frozen, unable to think, my entire universe filled with pain. The idea that Ruby-Eye could do something similar just by _pulling_ . . . It made me shiver despite the warmth of the water. 

I didn't want Val to have to feel that, ever. Not the fear, and not the sensation of those red-hot hooks trying to tear into him. 

When had I even developed this absolute need to protect? Or had it been there from the beginning, woven into the crimson dragon pattern Ruby-Eye had built me on without bothering to understand what all the bits were, hidden by the Mazoku part of my nature and the things he'd had me do? 

"Would it help if I said I was sorry?" I asked, pitching my voice to carry above the sound of the fountain. 

Val stopped splashing. " . . . Maybe. At least it would be a start." 

"You know I'm not good with this." Which was true. 

"I know. Neither am I." Also true. 

It hurt, but I managed to say, "Let me try another one: You were right. I decided what we were going to do without ever asking for your opinion." 

Val climbed out of the cold pool and came over to join me in the hot one. 

"I still want to beat on you," he said conversationally. "I almost lost you. Again. Do you realize what would have happened if you had managed to cut me loose?" 

Yeah, I knew. I'd heard the story enough times now to understand, even if I hadn't witnessed the events myself. 

"I would have come back to you." Explanation? Protest? Self-justification? I couldn't have said. "It might have taken a while, but I wouldn't have left you." 

"You would have _tried_ to come back," Val said flatly. "But there's no way you could know for certain it would be possible. Hell, you didn't even know _this_ time. I won't tell you not to get overconfident, because I know what confidence means for a Mazoku. Just stop pretending to be a prophet, okay?" 

"If it makes you happy, little dragon." 

"It just might." He licked the jaw of my middle head. "Try to think like a mortal a bit, from time to time. Live each day like it's the last. Don't take risks that might end in getting killed unless you're okay with not coming back. And remember that _I'm_ never okay with you not coming back. Having you torn out of me hurt more than becoming a Mazoku ever did." 

When I tried to unfurl a wing across his back, our wingtips bumped one another as he tried to do the same for me. Val snorted, and we both grinned. 

"We're in trouble, aren't we," my little dragon said, more soberly. "Xellos, Zelas, Dynast, and Ruby-Eye . . . Maybe none of them would be able to figure out what you're thinking on their own, but put them all together and they're capable of . . . logic-ing it out, I guess." 

"That doesn't mean they've won. We just need a strategy with some element of randomness in it. Or one where it doesn't matter if they figure it out. Or . . ." I grimaced, because I hated saying it. "Or trust the mortals more, without one of us supervising them this time. Both sides have been largely discounting them because Lina Inverse is crippled at the moment, but place a fusion weapon like your lance in the hands of her husband, and he might be able to serve as an effective distraction, at least." 

"What if . . ." Val said, then stopped. 

"Hm?" 

"What if we make it look as though our alliance with them broke up?" Val said slowly. "I mean, it's the kind of thing the others would be _expecting_ you to do, isn't it? Use the mortals, then discard them when they turn out to not be very useful at all?" 

"And then stage a coordinated attack from both ends?" I pondered. "It _could_ work, but we're going to have to figure out where Ruby-Eye is going to strike next. Luring him out isn't going to work again." Which pissed me off. I'd wasted our best chance already, because I'd let the fucker rush me. I should have gotten everything set up before trying to contact him. Should have known he'd try to disrupt my time table just to make my life difficult. 

Lina Inverse had picked just the most perfect fucking time in the world to have that kid. I mean, I couldn't say I _liked_ the sorceress, exactly, but I had a certain amount of respect for anyone who could turn Phibby into golden flambe. If she'd been unencumbered, she might have been useful. Why wasn't there a way to speed up a fucking pregnancy? Not that she'd go for that, anyway. Mortal woman got weird about babies when they were pregnant. There was no way she would risk it. Why couldn't it have been someone else, like that fucking sweetness-and-light Princess Amelia— 

Someone . . . else. Someone else? 

I had a glimmer of an idea. But I was going to have to talk to someone who knew more about pregnant humans than I did. And then to the sorceress herself, if it looked like it might work. 

"Val?" 

"Mmm?" 

"If you needed to find a healer—for a human, I mean, for some condition that couldn't be resolved by just throwing a spell or two—where would you start?" 

My dragon's brow ridges wrinkled, and the featherscales on them rose. "Why would you—? No, never mind. You'll tell me when you're ready, or at least you'd better. And . . . um. It would depend on why. Human medical science in general—anatomy, surgery, that kind of stuff—is at its most advanced in the far southeast, or so I've heard, but they don't know squat about magic there, and there are some details that you can _only_ study with magic. Jillas always says that one day someone's going to make a lens strong enough to see individual cells, but we're not there yet. I think . . ." He hesitated, then shrugged. "You could do worse than to start in Seyruun. They might be known as the 'White Magic Capital', but they have a college of medicine there too, and I'd be really surprised if they hadn't been inviting people from the Outer World to study with them. Plus, we've already got the contacts." 

"Thanks, little dragon," I said, nuzzling his jaw. 

"If you really want to thank me, then sometime when you've got all your necks working again . . ." 

"Hmm?" 

His jaws parted slightly in a grin. "Fuck me until I can't stand." 

I chuckled. "Now, _there's_ a wish I'm not going to have any trouble granting." Just hearing it, and tasting the flavour of his lust, had my cock unsheathing itself. It took quite a bit of mind-over-matter to get my body to behave itself. 

"Are you still going to make a sword for Gourry?" Val asked, after several long, silent moments of us half-dozing together in the water. 

" . . . Yeah. Not that I'm happy giving him something that might be able to hurt me—or you—but if I give him anything less, it won't be much help anyway." What kind of blade would best suit the ex-Swordsman of Light? He'd made his reputation with a straight, one-handed longsword, but was that really the best choice for him? Well, the middle of a war wasn't the best time to retrain, so it was probably better not to go too far afield. I ran my memories of how he fought—both the battles I'd watched, and the time I'd crossed swords with him in the Kataarts—past my mind's eye, considering stance, limb length, fighting style. The details that would let me decide on specific blade dimensions and hilt type. He liked to block with his blade angled a certain way, slid his foot just so when he thrust . . . 

I wasn't really surprised when I calculated that the type of sword best suited to him . . . was very like Gorun Nova, right down to the spikes sticking out where guard met blade (which were functional elements, designed to catch and turn an opponent's sword, not mere decoration). Well, maybe I could at least change the shape of the pommel. The original had never looked quite right to me. Dark Star's design sense just sucked, I guess. 

I sighed and tentatively raised my head, the one whose neck had been broken. It seemed to be holding now, and the pain wasn't so bad I couldn't tolerate it. Good enough. Still, I was careful when I waded out of the pool and shook off the worst of the water, because if I broke it again, I was going to have to start the whole resting procedure all over. 

Shrinking down to human form left me with a pain in the side of my single neck. I fingered it gingerly, and grimaced when I found it hot and slightly swollen. 

"That's quite a bruise," Val said, snaking his head down for a closer look. "I'm not sure I've ever seen that shade of purple before." He flicked his tongue lightly over the swollen bit. It stung, but I didn't say anything. "What now?" 

"I'm going to the armoury for raw materials," I said. 

"I'll come with you, then. Any longer in the water and my scales are going to start buckling." He got out of the water and shook himself exactly the same way I had. Thanks to the spells left behind by the dragons who had built this place, any drops of water that would have landed on the pathways between the pools—or on me—evaporated in midair instead. Then he shrank back to his human form. "Let's go." 

The armoury yielded its usual selection of shitty left-behind weapons, and I thoughtfully considered the mix of steels, orihalcon, and other odds and ends on display. Even if the only reason I was doing this right now was because I wanted to stall, I needed to do it right. In the end, I picked two swords and an orihalcon dagger and laid them on the sands of the practice area outside. I knelt in front of them to consider a little more, picturing what I was trying to do inside my head, while Val stood at my shoulder. 

Another fusion weapon. Not another Gorun Nova, with its impractical drain on the wearer's will, but something that, if less powerful, permitted greater endurance, and could function as a mundane blade without requiring the wielder to fiddle with a pin. Really, Dark Star had been a fucking lousy weaponsmith, when you thought about it. Not another Khirr, either—I couldn't see that blonde airhead being able to dominate and wield a Mazoku. This would have to be without a will of its own. 

What I had laid out on the sands wasn't quite enough, though. I rubbed my chin absently, then said to Val, "Can you crystallize a bit of your power? About this much." I used my fingers to define an inch-long oval. 

His eyebrows rose. "I can try." 

Doing the same with my own power was child's play, of course, more like firing off a spell than creating a Mazoku, and a moment later, I had a glowing dark red gem lying in the palm of my hand. 

Val took a little longer, but then to my knowledge, he'd never done this before. Still, the crystal he dropped into my hand was flawless, glowing bluish-white. It didn't quite touch the red crystal, but where they were closest together, the two sent up a little fountain of gold sparks. 

"Good," I said, flashing my dragon a smile. "Let's just hope this doesn't end up being too much power for that blonde airhead." 

"Gourry? He isn't as stupid as he looks," Val said, with unexpected seriousness. "He _prefers_ to have someone else do his thinking for him, but he can function on his own if he has to." 

I snorted—really, I didn't _care_ , and the swordsman always managed to look really, _really_ stupid when he wasn't fighting—and gestured at the weapons, if you could call such dull-edged lumps of metal _weapons_ , that were lying in the sand. They rose in the air, and I applied a blast furnace's worth of contained heat when they'd risen to about four feet above the sand, melting them into metal blobs. I then spent several minutes combining and separating them, adjusting the carbon and orihalcon content of various types of steel, and weaving minute threads of metal together, before I was satisfied enough with my creation to let it cool back to a semi-solid state. Then I floated it up slightly higher and poked the crystal gems into their sockets, which I had placed right at the junction of hilt and blade. 

Sputtering gold sparks bit into my power and caused me to lose my mental grip on the blade for a moment. I caught it again before it could fall to the sand and cooled it down to solidity, then plucked it from the air and swung it to test the balance. 

"Can't tell how it matches up to Gorun Nova, but it should do," I said, grinning as I watched gold sparks crackle along the blade. 

"Mind giving me a shot?" My little dragon held out his hand, and I tossed the sword to him. He caught it, then closed his eyes and swung it through several motions, and I felt my eyebrows rise. "Hmm. I only got my hands on Gorun Nova briefly, and never used it as a weapon, but from what I remember, it was like swinging a hilt with no blade—the light didn't weight anything, or at least, not physically. While I'm not the best judge of swords, I'd say this one is better. But not the same." He opened his eyes and grinned at me. "Hell, the only way you could make it better would be to have it fight by itself. But that would just piss Gourry off." 

I grinned back at him. Suddenly I was feeling like myself again: confident and ready to kick some ass. "Good. So now we go back to Seyruun, but first . . ." I took a step forward, then sideways, to avoid impaling myself on the sword Val still held in his hand, and leaned down. 

Water Dragon King or no Water Dragon King, he still tasted the same as ever, still invoked a primal posessiveness in me: _Mine_. And he wrapped an arm around my neck (careful of the bruises) and kissed me back with just as much enthusiasm as I'd offered him. 

"Might want to make a scabbard for this before you give it away," he said when we finally parted for breath, holding up the sword. So I did, waving my hand over it before I took it back. 

Then I reached out with my mind, located the chimera, and used him as the point of reference for a teleport . . . and landed in the midst of chaos. 

Eight dragons, one sorceress, one chimera, one princess, one Knight of Ceiphied, and a couple of more ordinary humans were yelling at each other. 

_Why in hell did I ever want to involve mortals in this again?_


	41. Zelgadis

Holding this conversation in the middle of the sitting room being used by Milgazia and the young golden dragons he led had been pretty stupid, in retrospect. I hadn't realized it at the time, and it was where we'd found Lina, talking to Milgazia, but . . . yes, stupid. 

I was almost relieved when Gaav and Val appeared, and the Dark Lord extended that terrifying aura of his. It shut up the young dragons who were complaining about not having been taken along, and that meant that Milgazia no longer had to verbally fend them off. 

Which left Lina as the only one talking. 

"And that means that—Oh, hi, there, Val, Gaav! Didn't see you come in!" Thankfully she didn't try to backslap either of them. I'm not sure whether that would have produced an irritated Dark Lord or a sprained hand, but either way, the results wouldn't have been good. 

"Looks like everyone's here," Gaav said. "Good. That means I won't have to go over this twice." 

"This?" I asked. _Oh, hell, he has another plan, doesn't he. Because the last one worked_ so _well._

"Val's plan," the Dark Lord said, bushy eyebrows rising. "Or at least the beginnings of one. We can flesh it out as we go along." 

Everyone turned to look at Val. 

"Water Dragon King," murmured one of the young dragons. 

That turned out to be a mistake. 

Val's right hand and arm scaled over as it shot forward and caught the young golden by the throat. "Don't you _ever_ call me that again. The northern oceans will be warm enough for Dynast Grauscherra to take up pineapple cultivation as a hobby before I start calling that hatchling-murderer Vrabazard my brother, or abandon my mate for the sake of something a dead god wants to shove off on me. Got it?" 

The young golden stared back at him, looking a bit glazed. "Yes . . . sir." 

"Good." Val gave the younger dragon a little push as he let go, and the golden staggered back, although he was thankfully caught by his friends before he could lose control of his weight and take out part of our floor. "Now. You fledglings get out of here. You don't need to be in on this discussion. Milgazia will tell you whatever you need to know, when we get that far." 

One of them opened his mouth to protest, but Milgazia got there first. "He's right. Go. I will ensure our interests are represented." 

The younger dragon shut his mouth again. One of the others said, "Yes, Elder." And they began to file out. When they were all gone, Milgazia shut the door behind them. 

The room now contained Gaav, Val, Luna, Lina, Gourry, me, Ame, Sylphiel, Filia, Milgazia, and Taben's sister. Still too many people for any kind of real secrecy, if that was what Gaav wanted. 

"Do we need Phil here too?" I forced myself to ask. 

Gaav shook his head. "Don't think so. In fact . . ." His gaze fell on Perella Raisten, who cringed, but refused to wilt altogether. 

"I'm staying," she said. "There's been too much playing fast and loose with my brother's life already. I will ensure his interests are represented," she added, misquoting Milgazia. 

"Well, ten people is already too many to keep a fucking secret for more than a couple of days," Gaav rumbled. "Fine, then." 

"So what's the plan?" Lina asked. 

Gaav nodded at Val, who said, "We're going to fake our alliance coming apart so that we can draw that bastard Ruby-Eye in again, since there's still no way we can take the fight to him." 

Luna wrinkled her nose, as though she smelled something bad. Milgazia frowned. I tried to ignore their suspicions and consider the plan at face value. 

"It's more of a first step than an actual plan," I said slowly. "Isn't it?" 

The Dark Lord grunted. "I have an idea on how we might be able to get more firepower, but if it doesn't work out, we're going to have to try the divide-and-conquer approach we discussed before, and hope we can separate one of them from the whole this time so that Val and I can squish it." 

"So what's _that_ part of the plan?" Lina asked, hands on hips. 

"Sylphiel," Gaav said, turning to face her. The priestess didn't flinch—in my experience, she had a pretty stiff spine when dealing with ultimate evil. It was only when the pressure was off that she turned into an air-headed clutz. "You're a trained healer. Of humans." 

Sylphiel blinked. "Yes?" 

"Is it possible to transfer a human fetus from one mother to another without harming any of the people involved, including the kid?" 

That caused a mass facefault involving the entire room, except for Gaav himself, Val, who must have known in advance, and Sylphiel. 

"Now, wait just a minute—" Lina began loudly. 

Val muttered something ending in "muffle" and flicked his fingers at her. Suddenly, Lina became silent, although her mouth was still moving. 

"It is possible," said Sylphiel, with surprising calm. 

"The College of Healing's been working on it," Amelia added. "They haven't tried it on a human yet, but they've got some healthy piglets that went through the process." 

"Why would you attempt such a thing?" Milgazia sounded bewildered. 

"Because there can be times when the alternative is losing either the mother or the baby, or even both," Sylphiel said firmly. "Human women with weak hearts can easily die during pregnancy, and take the baby with them—the only way to prevent it is to have them monitored around the clock by a white mage. Only the richest women can afford that. Working in the poor quarter, I sometimes have to abort what would have been perfectly healthy children to save their mothers' lives. But transferring the child only requires an hour or two of time, which makes it much easier than constant monitoring. If I'd had a surgeon to work with me, I might have been able to save more than a dozen babies this year." 

That was _much_ more information than I'd ever wanted on the subject—Rezo had treated complications of pregnancy and childbirth sometimes, but he'd never talked about them with me, and I'd been glad to keep it that way. Of the other males in the room, well, two were dragons, one was a Mazoku, and Gourry seemed to be asleep. Which meant I was the only one squirming, as far as I could tell. Lina was starting to turn purple in the face, but that didn't count as _squirming_. Really, I was half-surprised she hadn't punched anyone yet. Instead, she was making a series of intricate hand gestures. I raised my eyebrows as I realized she was drawing runes in the air, stopping only when a final gesture invoked a sound like a large bubble popping. 

_Then_ she punched Val in the stomach. Her fist connected with a dull thud, and the target didn't move. 

"That's for trying to shut me up!" Lina snapped, grimacing as she shook her hand out. _I guess dragons have really hard abs._

"If he hadn't, we just would have had to waste time on your fucking yelling before we could get all the cards on the table," Gaav said, looking at her with his head slightly tilted. "Question is, are you going to bet or fold?" 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Gourry wasn't asleep anymore. His blue eyes were unusually shadowy as he watched his wife. 

Lina worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. Then she sighed and said, "Bet. Although I've never been a gambling type. Normally it's just a waste of money. But this time it seems like the best chance—ours and hers." She cradled her belly with one hand. 

"Ideally this is going to have to be done in secret," Milgazia said. "Or at least without Xellos and the other Mazoku finding out." He glanced at Filia, but she was staring at the floor. 

I thought for a moment about logistics. "Getting a surgeon shouldn't be a problem—we'll just grab whoever's been doing the trials at the Institute and tell him one of Sylphiel's clients volunteered for a human trial. He doesn't need to know who the patient really is. And we have more than enough healers in this room right now. The problem is going to be finding a surrogate mother." 

" . . . I'll do it." Not a loud voice, but a firm one. And we all turned to look at Perella Raisten. "I haven't done anyone much good so far," she added. "I spent all of that battle—" A shudder. "—waving my arms and throwing things and doing anything I could think of that might get my brother's attention, but he didn't give me so much as a single look. This, at least, is something that I can do." 

"You realize that this isn't going to make it much more likely that we can save your brother," Milgazia said. 

"I know. But I think he'd rather be dead than forced to destroy the world." 

"My people might have said that about me once." Val barely breathed the words, but my enhanced hearing picked them up anyway. "And they'd have been wrong." 

Gaav nuzzled his ear and whispered "Bullshit" into it. I coughed to hide the sound that I almost made. Gaav really was the most unromantic person I'd ever laid eyes on . . . and yet Val seemed to like it. 

"We need to work out the details," Milgazia said. "But not, I think, tonight." 

It really was getting dark outside the windows, and it had been a ridiculous roller-coaster of a day. Not to mention that none of us had had supper. 

That, at least, was an easy problem to fix. I had the servants lay out some food in one of the secondary dining halls. None of us were likely to care that it was re-warmed. 

Unusually, not only did Gaav and Val join us for the meal, but Gaav actually ate. Quite a bit. His table manners were better than Lina's, although I admit that's a pretty low bar to clear. It looked like Lina wasn't bothered by what we'd been planning, because she was clearing the plates in front of her and stealing Gourry's food—and Ame's and Perella's, since they were within easy reach, and she tried to go after Gaav's at one point too, but the Dark Lord raised an eyebrow and caught her wrist between his left thumb and forefinger. She still strained against him for several seconds before snarling, "Oh, _fine!_ " and pulling back. 

Milgazia and Filia were the ones who didn't eat, although they joined us at the table and accepted some tea, which they sipped slowly. Val ate, and the other dragons gave him odd looks for it until he grumbled something in Ryugo that made Milgazia's eyebrows rise. 

By the time the meal was over, I was dead tired, and Lina, Perella, Ame, and Sylphiel didn't look much better. Sylphiel even accepted my offer of a room at the palace for the night, which I couldn't remember her ever doing before. 

Once we'd gotten that sorted out, Ame and I headed for our private rooms on the second floor, overlooking the gardens. We walked silently, hand in hand, along the halls. I think we were both still processing everything that had happened that day—I know I was. 

That came to an end abruptly as we saw two figures standing in the hall outside our door. Damien looked bedraggled, with his clothes smudged with dirt and . . . was that soot? His tutor looked exasperated, and also slightly sooty. 

I sighed, because I knew what was coming, or at least the general outline. That meant Ame was the one who asked, "What happened?" 

"The Prince decided to attempt to cast a Fireball spell," the tutor said. "He . . . was almost successful. Most of the schoolroom is somewhat the worse for wear. Some of the maids are trying to see if anything can be salvaged, but I am not very hopeful." 

I blinked—all right, not _quite_ what I'd been expecting after all. I'd thought he'd either set fire to something, or crawled or fallen into one of the many fireplaces scattered around the castle. 

"Where did you learn Fireball?" I asked my adoptive son, who was still staring at the floor. 

"From a book." He traced a curved line in the carpet with his big toe and added, "And I asked Lina-san to give me a few pointers." 

Lina. Of course, Lina. Having her wandering around the place bored and frustrated because she couldn't _do_ anything was a recipe for disaster. I'd known that all along. 

"And you didn't tell her that we'd forbidden you to learn fire shamanism, did you?" I asked. We'd banned both fire and earth spells on the grounds that they could do far too much collateral damage in the hands of a young child . . . although really, he wasn't so young anymore and it might be time to revisit that ban. Still, I'd thought Damien had his hands full with learning the other three branches of shamanism, plus white magic, plus all his other lessons. 

As I expected, he shook his head, still staring at the floor. 

I sighed again and turned to the tutor. "You can go. We'll take it from here." 

"Sir," the man said, and bowed before turning and leaving. 

"Let's sit down," I said, and opened the door on the private suite I shared with Ame. Normally my wife and I sat together on the big couch, while Damien sat sideways on the smaller one, but this time our son chose one of the severely upright chairs Ame was always talking about getting rid of. Did he want to feel as though he was being punished? 

"Why did you want to learn to cast Fireball?" Ame asked. 

"And why test it out indoors?" I added, because safe practice casting was the _real_ issue here, as far as I was concerned. 

"That was stupid, and I'll never do it again," Damien admitted, still studying the carpet. "I didn't expect it to blow up that way. I should have stuck to the guards' casting range like you told me, but he was getting in my face again and I wanted to show him that I could _too_ learn something from a book without someone spoon-feeding it to me one sentence at a time . . ." 

"He" was presumably the tutor. I exchanged looks with Ame—we were going to have to have a word with the man again. Or consider replacing him, but he was a fairly good teacher when he didn't fall into the trap of losing his temper and berating his students. 

"You still haven't told us why you wanted to learn the spell in the first place," I said. 

Damien flushed. "Because I'm _useless_ like this. The _world_ might end in the next few days, and I can't . . . I can't . . ." He made a frustrated gesture, looking up for the first time. "Mom wasn't much older than I am when she first went out adventuring with Lina Inverse, but I can't cast a spell that would even get a Mazoku's attention, much less—" He waved his hands, then fell silent. 

Ame smiled. "You know, I didn't know even as much magic as you do now when I first met Lina-san—just some white magic and lower-level astral shamanism. I learned most of the rest from your father, while we were travelling together." 

" . . . Oh." 

"If you really want to help with the Mazoku, work on your astral shamanism," I added. "There are only three branches of magic that can do damage to an astral being, and that's one of them." 

"And holy and black magic," Damien said. "I know that, but it didn't . . ." He shook his head. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" he chanted under his breath. 

"If you like, I can start you on black magic," I said—even if I'd never reached the Dragon-Slave-casting level, I could manage some of the higher spells, like Gaav Flare and Dolph Strash. "Think about it carefully, though. Mazoku-based magic isn't popular here, and it would be a while before you learned anything useful." 

Damien was already shaking his head. "Trying to work my way up to Ra Tilt would be quicker, wouldn't it? Thanks, Dad." 

"In the meanwhile, you can help clean up the room you tried to turn to charcoal," I added. 

Thankfully, Damien wasn't stupid—he knew I couldn't let him get away without any visible punishment after what he'd done. So he made a face, but he also nodded. 

I hadn't realized how tense I was inside until I started to relax again. It happened every time I had to be a father. Damien was actually Phil's sister's son's unwanted fifth child, and although he had come to live with us when he was only a couple of months old and he didn't remember his genetic parents, I still felt like a fraud sometimes. 

I wondered how Lina and Gourry would handle being parents. If they had the chance, that was.


	42. Taben

So much for answered prayers. 

I didn't know whether or not he'd heard me, but Gaav had come, and he'd fought to destroy the evil that had taken over my body. 

Unsuccessfully. 

It made me sick when I heard the crack of bone as his neck broke. I couldn't follow most of the fight—I couldn't actually see what was happening on the astral plane any more now than I ever could, although I'd occasionally pick up some weird phantom sensation or other, projected back to the physical by the creature riding me. Like the taste of blood, or the smell of onions cooking (although I had no idea what that had to do with anything). 

And Perella. She'd been there. She'd thrown stuff, like she had when we were kids and she'd needed to get my attention, but _it_ hadn't even let me turn my head. I thought she'd been shouting at me, too, but I hadn't been able to tell which voice was hers, or pick it out of the rest of the noise around me. 

Hearing was a _terrible_ way to learn what was going on. Not only was it unpleasant and inescapable, it wasn't even very effective. Being deaf was much, much easier. If there was something unpleasant going on around me, I could just take my Ear off and turn my back to it. I desperately wished for the ability to be ignorant again. 

Right now, Ruby-Eye was swearing terrible oaths in languages I didn't understand. Or maybe reciting his shopping list—how was I supposed to know? But regardless, he didn't seem pleased. 

"Perhaps I should have listened to you more carefully, Priest," the Dark Lord grated out at last. "You were correct that Gaav does not seem . . . amenable. And his pet dragon is . . . unexpected." 

"That would be a good word for Valgaav," Xellos agreed cheerfully. 

"However, I still find it difficult to believe that my Chaos Dragon has thrown in with the mortals." 

Xellos shrugged. "Ragradia damaged him, and then Valgaav finished the job by giving him the desire to protect something. The only plan I can think of for making Gaav-sama return to our cause would be to make it look as though someone else had killed the dragon." 

"Do not mistake my Chaos Dragon's chosen persona for anything other than the mask it is," Ruby-Eye growled. "He is no fool. He would see our hand behind such a plan immediately. No, we will need to confuse, demoralize, and if possible, cleave away his human allies. Devise your plan within those parameters, Priest." 

"As you wish, Lord." If I'd been Ruby-Eye, I wouldn't have liked Xellos' sly expression one bit, but I didn't think the Dark Lord ascribed much meaning to the mortal ritual grimaces the lesser Mazoku was imitating. 

Analyzing their behaviour made my imprisonment just a little bit less torturous. Sometimes, for a few seconds, it even made me forget just how badly I wanted to die.


	43. Val

I was very glad that we had enough healers that I didn't need to be present during the surgery. Very, very glad. Fighting was one thing, but the idea of cutting into the body of a defenseless person made me feel nauseous if I looked at it too closely. I think it was the "defenseless" part that was the problem. I had too many bad memories clustering around that. 

Rather than join Gourry, Zelgadis, and Luna in the "pace in circles outside the operating room, quietly going crazy" club, I went to the library. Well, to one of the libraries. Seyruun had hundreds, so I'd asked Zelgadis which one had the most texts on cosmology, knowing that he had to have looked through every single hoard of books in the city. There were some things that I wanted— _needed_ —to understand before we had to confront Ruby-Eye again. And I couldn't ask Gaav. Not this time. My mate knew a great deal more on the subject than a stack of books penned by mortals, but he also had a specific point of view that I wanted to get away from for a bit. 

Ruby-Eye had a hold over him. I knew that as well as he did. I could only imagine how hard that must be on him. For as long as I'd known him, he'd been fighting to survive because he refused to knuckle under and go back to following Ruby-Eye's agenda like a good little Mazoku. Well, all right, and because he enjoyed fighting for its own sake, but he had too much common sense to put his life on the line for any reason except believing that dying was better than giving in. 

Without that indomitable spirit, he wouldn't have been the person I'd fallen in love with, and I hated Ruby-Eye for trying to strip that away from him. Well, I mean, I'd always hated Ruby-Eye—I'd been taught to do so since before I'd hatched the first time!—but it had become personal in a way it had never been before. 

There was no way I'd let him get his talons into my mate again. I would find a way to break the bond that still linked Gaav to his progenitor. Failure wasn't an option. 

Poking through the contents of the library, I went preferentially for books in Ryugo, Elvish, and a couple of languages that had died out during or immediately after the Shinma War. The Mazoku and the Dragon Gods had been much more present, interacting openly with the world, before Ceiphied and Shabranigdo collaborated to take out the center of the Sleeping Dragon Continent. Of course, Seyruun was only a few hundred years old, so it didn't have many books from that era, and those it did have tended to be either enchanted somehow, or recopied several times, often by someone who didn't understand the language nearly as well as they thought they did. One book in Ryugo was so bad it had me scribbling in the margins as I went through the first few pages, indicating the errors and trying to provide corrections in the cases where I could make sense of anything at all, before I gave up in disgust. It looked like it was mostly about tea, anyway. 

I'd been there several hours before I hit the jackpot: a small clothbound book layered with spells, titled, simply, "Journal". In old-fashioned Ryugo. I had to apply an unlocking spell to open it—a spell that was common among dragons, but which I had never seen a human use. 

The writer had been a crimson dragon—one of the last crimson dragons, I suspected, although there was no way to prove that just from what he'd written. He'd been some kind of mid-ranking officer among the dragon forces that had fought in the war, and one of their more-skilled secular mages. And he'd witnessed the early days of the five lesser Dark Lords Ruby-Eye had created. In fact, he'd been one of those who'd first investigated how they fit into the order of the world. Which was exactly the kind of information I wanted. 

I could have done without his digressions about beer, though. And the ones about socks. Especially the ones about socks. They were numerous and detailed enough to make me think he'd been some kind of foot fetishist. 

Gaav found me squinting at crabbed handwriting and taking notes. "What're you up to?" he asked, with that familiar smirk on his face. 

"I'll tell you if it looks like it's going to work out," I said, moving my arm so that my elbow blocked his view of the book and my notes. "Is it time for lunch already?" 

"Try supper, little dragon. You've been in here all day." 

"Guess I lost track of time," I said, pushing my chair back from the table I'd been using, and slipping both the book and my notes into a fold in space. Technically that meant I was stealing the book, but the library had no idea what it was, anyway. Even its catalogue entry only read, "Sealed journal (dragon?)". They wouldn't miss it. "Is Lina . . . ?" 

He shrugged. "They tell me it went okay. I'm probably the last person she wants to see right now, so I didn't bother to go check in person." 

There was something off about his expression, I thought. "Do you hate not being the center of attention that much?" 

He shook his head. "It's just that this is taking too fucking long, and there's no way we can speed it up. But at the same time, the other side isn't standing there with its hands in its pockets. And Xellos is still offering lip-service to Ruby-Eye." 

I grimaced. "That's why I hate this strategy stuff. It's like playing chess without being able to see the board or knowing anything about your opponent's moves. You have to guess about everything. I have to be able to see the puppet strings if I want to manipulate someone." 

"You just need a couple of thousand more years of practice," my mate said. "You've mastered the basic patterns of motivation of mortals and Mazoku, but you need more experience with the corner cases. Xellos and Zelas are in a class of their own, though." 

A couple of thousand more years. Well, some dragons did live that long, and I suspected my current lifespan might be longer than normal—even infinite—thanks to the astral energies coursing through my physical body. Assuming the world didn't come apart within the next few days. 

"One other thing," Gaav said. "I ran into your half-troll on my way out of the palace. Grabbed me by the sleeve and asked me where you were. I just about smashed him into a wall before I realized who he was. You might want to talk to him about not pulling shit like that." 

How long _had_ it been since I'd seen Gravos? Or Jillas, for that matter? The last time . . . had been at the temple, just after I'd recovered my memory. Not really all _that_ long ago, in absolute terms, but I should have been keeping a better eye on them. Especially since an unsupervised Jillas tended to result in things unexpectedly going bang. Left alone for long enough, he was capable of generating a very _big_ bang. _Oh, hell, I'd better figure out what they're up to._

The problem was, I'd never been very good at picking out individual mortal auras on the astral, Gaav didn't know my two inept servants well enough to help, and I couldn't find anyone who actually _knew_ the pair to ask about them, because everyone was still at the medical college with Lina Inverse and not back up at the palace. I was reduced to grabbing anyone I saw and asking them about a fox-man or a troll-lizard cross. The servants mostly responded immediately, either recognizing me or scared into compliance by the implicit threat of my mate's looming presence, but I had to grab some of the nobles by their collars and flash my talons in their faces before they'd answer me. Seyruun might be big on justice and white magic, but they seemed to need some pointers on egalitarianism. Well, they _were_ still an hereditary monarchy. 

Finally, I had a brainwave (mostly due to the rumbling of my stomach) and tried the kitchens. That got me a sandwich and some tidbits of information: yes, there was a half-troll who dropped by a couple of times a day to pick up some food for himself and at least one other person. When he left, he headed off in a direction that corresponded vaguely to the barracks and servants' quarters. 

Now that I had a direction, things got easier, especially since I now knew that talking to nobles was a waste of time and could stick to collaring servants and guards. 

I eventually tracked my two errant beastmen to a shed at the edge of the practice fields. There were several of them in a row, but the voices gave away which one it was. 

" . . . keep telling you, it's too soon! I want to be finished with the plans, at least, before I show it to Val-sama!" 

"Yeah, but . . . it's kind of too late. Gaav-sama already said he'd tell him we were looking for him." 

I opened the door without knocking. "What are you two up to _now_?" I asked. 

Jillas yipped and tried to cover the large blueprint he was working on with his very short arms. Gravos just sort of stared at the floor and shuffled his feet. 

The fox couldn't really stop me from looking over his shoulder, as I'd done hundreds of times during my second hatchlinghood. Hell, for the first few months I'd sometimes perched _on_ his shoulder in my natural form. Then I'd gotten too big. But I'd seen enough of Jillas' creations to recognize what this one probably was. 

" . . . A bomb? I didn't think you needed to _design_ those so much anymore." 

"This one isn't like the others, Boss! It's this stuff, y'see." Jillas reached under the drafting table at which he sat and brought out a small box which initially looked like it was made of wood. When he opened it, though, it released a puff of frost and revealed a metal interior engraved with a refrigeration spell. And inside that sat a ceramic cup full of what looked like ice. "Can't keep it open for long," he added, shutting the box again. "This stuff goes bang too easily if it thaws, and it makes _big_ bangs. Like, that little cupful'd take out this whole shed. Can't do _that_ with gunpowder. S'called nitroglycerin. Never worked with it before, 'cause it's too difficult to handle without blowing yourself up by accident, but when I saw these boxes for sale at the market I figured they were perfect for it." 

"So you're going to build a bomb full of little cups inside little boxes?" I said, feeling a bit bemused. 

"Nah, I figure we could use big canisters engraved with the cooling spells. Have to be careful while we're filling them, that's all. You really can't drop this stuff if it isn't frozen. Fill the whole bomb with canisters, then have someone shoot off a Fireball or something at it. Everything thaws, and . . . boom!" Jillas' hands shot up and out. "Bigger explosion than a Dragon Slave, and old Ruby-Eye's headed for the moon!" 

"Except that most of Ruby-Eye's bulk is on the astral," Gaav pointed out from behind me. "A physical explosion won't do anything except chew up the body he's wearing and let him loose." 

Jillas' ears drooped. 

"That doesn't mean it's useless," I told him quickly. "Anything that _does_ have a physical body won't like it at all. It might have kept our last fight from turning into a troll-splat. And there are a lot more sorcerers who can cast Fireball than there are who can handle a Dragon Slave." 

" . . . kedthalam," my mate said suddenly. 

I blinked. _Wait, what?_ I wasn't even sure if that was one word or two, or in what language. 

"Before your time, little dragon. It was a crimson dragon weapon against lesser Mazoku—an orihalcon-copper alloy tempered in a bath of oil, powdered minerals, and holy magic. It causes small-scale disruption of the astral. Fuck, I'd almost forgotten that stuff existed. It isn't hard enough for any weapon you'd use more than once, so they used to make it into arrowheads, but there's no reason it wouldn't work as bomb shrapnel. Flooding the area with astral disruption wouldn't kill Ruby-Eye, but it _would_ make him uncomfortable and keep him from leaving the area for a couple of minutes—moving through the astral at a time like that would be just as bad as trying to bend space across that shitty ward at the old temple. If we make enough of them, we could isolate any section of the battlefield we wanted to. It's going to be a lot of fucking work, though." Gaav gave Jillas a thoughtful look. 

Jillas' fur bristled, but he was also rubbing his hands together. He took down the sheet of paper he had on his drafting table and began to tack up another one. "So not quite so big, and you want to maximize the number of pieces of metal flying around . . . maybe make the bomb casing out of lots of thin layers? Or like a puzzle, where the bits hold together unless you press on them from the inside? Where're we gonna get this keddy stuff from, anyway?" 

"That's something for Milgazia and his fledgelings to do," I said. "I just hope we don't need more orihalcon than copper, or they won't be able to make much of it." 

Gaav shook his head. "Other way around, or I wouldn't have bothered suggesting it. The ratio's about five to one. I just hope I remember which herbs and which spells they're going to need. We don't have much time to experiment." 

_And that the herbs still exist,_ I thought but didn't say. I mean, if this had been a Crimson Dragon thing, that meant it dated from the days when the Sleeping Dragon Continent had been in one piece. When it had blown up, many species of plants must have gone with it. And animals. Maybe even species of people. 

I shook my head. I was getting distracted. "Jillas?" 

"Gimme a day or two and I'll have a plan for something a fishman could build," the fox said. He was already beginning to sketch something shaped like a low dome. "Might not be the most efficient, but like you said, we don't have much time." 

"Thanks," I said, and reached over to ruffle his ears. 

"Val-sama!" He said it in a reproachful tone, but he had a grin on his face. 

When Gaav slid his arm around my waist and guided me back out of the shed, I didn't protest. 

"So now what?" I asked quietly when we'd made it outside. 

"Now we go home for the night, little dragon. Unless you want to go back to the library." 

I shook my head. "I've got what I need for now. I need to think about it some more, though. Put it all together." 

"Well, it wasn't _thinking_ I had in mind for tonight." He leaned down close to my ear, and I distinctly felt a stray strand of his hair tickle across the back of my neck. 

I smirked, although in our current positions, he couldn't see my face. "Well, I don't have to start thinking right away. We _could_ do something else first." 

"Perfect." Space warped, and we were back at the aerie, in the giant bathing room. 

I let my smirk widen. "That doesn't mean I have to make it easy for you, though." And I ducked and twisted out of his arms, and ran for the bowl of the deep fountain with the statue at the center. 

"Son of a bitch!" But he was laughing, too. 

I sent my clothes to nowhere as I vaulted over the edge of the fountain's bowl, and splashed down in the water. Since it was a dragon-sized bowl, and I was in my humanoid form at the moment, I plunged straight down several bodylengths before my feet struck the stone of the bottom and I was able to push off—at an angle, not straight up, because on the way down, I'd felt a shockwave and seen Gaav drop in from above me. Fortunately, I was pretty sure my reinforced body didn't _need_ to breathe, even if it was more comfortable if I did. 

I'd nearly reached the surface when I felt a powerful grip on my ankle and looked down into Gaav's smirking face. He'd turned himself into a dead weight hanging from my leg, and no matter how I kicked, I was drawn back down towards the bottom of the basin. Down into his arms, once his feet grounded, although I managed to kick him in the chest. The only thing I really managed to do to him was grab onto his hair and remove the clip, so that it floated loose among the currents in the water, spreading out behind him. He'd shucked his clothes too, so when he finally had me down, we were standing bare chest to bare chest with his arms around me. 

I stole a kiss before slipping from his arms again, my talonless human toes digging deep into the muscles of his leg to help me thrust myself upward. I didn't get far, though, before Gaav grabbed me by my braided hair and yanked me back. This time, he reached over my right shoulder and under my left arm and joined his hands behind my back, which was a much more difficult hold to get out of. Having secured me, he began to kiss his way down the side of my neck. 

I let him. After all, it wasn't like I'd been seriously trying to run away. I just figured we both needed to release some tension. His thigh rubbed sneakily between my legs, and a moan escaped me, bubbling up through the water. I'd already been hard before he'd touched me there, and now I was leaking enough to make tiny clouds in the water as he bore me over backwards. 

He made the mistake of releasing his hold after he thought he had me pinned with his body, though, and I played my last trick, reverting to my true form. 

Gaav was laughing and cursing both as his head broke the surface of the water, his smaller form lifted on my scaled back. "Fuck, Val, you just won't quit, will you?" 

"Why would I do a stupid thing like stop? You love this." _And I love you._ I twisted my neck around so that I could lick the droplets of water from his skin, paying special attention to the area between his legs, delighting in the thick, musky flavour leaking from his cock, and the way he thrust his hips against my tongue. 

"Fucking dragon—guess I have to remind you of who's in charge here!" He yanked on the astral so hard and suddenly that he seemed to burst into his true form all at once. He growled softly as his weight came down on me, and nipped at the edge of my jaw with his left head while clamping onto the nape of my neck with the central one, making me shudder and keen. "Try slipping away from me now!" 

"I wouldn't dream of it." My jaw dropped open in a grin as I felt his unsheathed cock rub against the scales near the base of my tail—a grin that became a groan as his tail darted under to tease at my sheath. "Nng . . . Oh, please . . . please . . ." There was a throbbing empty ache inside my cloaca, making me squirm with need. 

"Please what?" Still a growl. I could feel his weight pressing down on my back, not punishing, but . . . restricting. He was the only person anywhere that I would trust to do such a thing to me. 

"Please put it _in_!" I just about growled the last word as his tail found a particularly sensitive spot that made sparks dance across my field of vision. 

He chuckled, and I knew he was enjoying this little proof that he still had power over me. At least in some areas. "Demanding little dragon. All right." 

He crouched a little lower and I twisted my tail and felt the tip of his erection slide between slight folds of scaled skin until it found the right place, just pressed against my opening. I tried to curse at him, but it came out in a jumble of syllables as he surged up and in, stretching me and filling me and—Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye!—it felt so good. My spine arched as my voice echoed from the walls, and I wondered hazily how I'd managed to stay by Gaav's side for eight hundred years without ever once just jumping him, as he began a series of hard, quick thrusts. 

His tail curled around my cock and squeezed gently, then tightened harder until it was just this side of painful as he thrust deeper inside me and started to paint my insides with hot seed. I could hear his breath, quick and rasping, as he groaned. "Fuck, Val . . ." 

Silently, I licked the jaw of his nearest head, and with what I think must have been a monumental effort, he adjusted the grip of his tail. He tightened it in coils, moving from the base of my cock to the tip, milking me. The sensation was almost too much, and I cried out one last time as I came. 

Afterwards I sagged underneath him, my wings floating on the surface of the water, feeling deliciously wrung out. 

"Everything's going to be all right," I found myself saying. 

Gaav chuckled. "Bet your ass it is, little dragon. I'll _make_ it come out all right, even if it doesn't want to, and Ruby-Eye can go fuck himself if he doesn't like it." 

"Mmm." 

I just hoped he was right.


	44. Filia

"Ugh, I swear that this is worse than being mostly killed by Copy Rezo." Lina made faces as she wriggled on the bed. 

"It is _not_ ," Sylphiel said. "And you weren't _mostly_ killed that time, you _were_ killed. I barely managed to bring you back in time." 

"I still think this is worse," Lina muttered resentfully. 

"And if it's absolutely necessary, we'll use Resurrection on you to heal you back up to full strength, but the doctors seem to think it's better if we wait. So that's what we'll do," I said firmly. 

"You healed _her_." Lina's scowl might have been almost funny if she'd been three or so. 

"Only because of the baby," Sylphiel said firmly. And magical healing didn't exactly mean Perella was safe, either. She was in the next room, being watched over by Milgazia, Amelia, one of the doctors, and her anxious husband. Sylphiel was going to stay here at the college to monitor them both overnight, I knew. And Lina was just being grumpy. Everyone knew that, including her. 

"It's just until tomorrow morning, Lina." That was Gourry, who was sitting beside the bed, within range of his wife's weak attempts at punching and kicking. He was a brave man. 

"And you'll put up with it quietly until morning," added Luna, cracking her knuckles. Lina turned slightly green. "In the meanwhile, Filia, you should go back to the palace with Milgazia and Amelia. Poor Zelgadis probably has his hands full. He might appreciate some help." 

She and Gourry would stay. That wasn't open to argument, even if Lina might wish it were. In the end, Lina didn't even bother asking. 

By the time I'd collected Milgazia and Amelia and we'd left the building, it was getting dark out. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Milgazia to teleport us to the palace gates—it was within line-of-sight, but I didn't trust myself to include two other adults in one of my spells—but one look at him stopped me. 

"What is it?" Apparently, Milgazia had noticed me looking at him. 

"It's just that I've never seen you _look_ like an elder before," I said tactlessly, and then winced. "I'm sorry." 

Milgazia shook his head. "I suppose part of me has decided that physical strength is more important than the appearance of authority," he said, amiably enough. "It's probably due to my having come of age in the middle of the Kouma War. That wasn't a conflict with any place for the weak. I will get older eventually, of course, but . . . not just yet. However, right now I feel as though I could eat the largest meal I've had this past century, and then sleep for a month or so." 

"That does sound like a good idea," I admitted, offering him a small smile. He was actually quite a handsome figure of a dragon, and a good deal smarter than some I had known. He probably thought I was a silly little chit, though, and . . . Why did I wish it was the garbage Mazoku beside me instead? 

I was . . . worried about Xellos. More than I was worried about Val, actually. Val at least had someone by his side, but Xellos couldn't ever be anything other than alone. 

I suppose it all just proves you can develop tolerance and even affection for anything if you're exposed to it long enough. Even raw garbage. 

Unexpectedly, we were met in the entrance hall by one of the young dragons who had come down from the north with Milgazia. "Elder, sir, there is someone here who wants to speak to you." 

Milgazia blinked. "To me?" 

"Yes, sir." The young dragon moved aside. I blinked. 

"Jillas? What are you doing here?" 

The fox forced a smile. "'S about bombs, boss. I talked to Gaav-sama and Val-sama today, and they've got some ideas, but we'll need the other dragons' help. So I figured I should give fair warning before they showed up tomorrow." 

"Jillas, do you have any idea how late it is?" I asked sharply. "Elder Milgazia is tired. This could have waited until morning." 

Jillas' ears drooped. He took a breath to say something else, but Milgazia held up his hand to stop him. 

"We're at war here. My condition isn't important, so long as I can stay on my feet. But I don't understand why you would want to talk to me about . . . bombs." He said the word as though he barely understood what it meant. Well, _I'd_ barely understood what it meant before I'd encountered Jillas, so that was hardly surprising. 

"Have y'ever heard of something called ked . . . keddy . . . _kedthalam_ , that was it!" 

Milgazia blinked several times. "Only vaguely, as a component of our arsenal during the Shinma War. The last examples had been lost long before I was hatched. I'm not even quite sure what it was." His eyes narrowed. "Of course. The Chaos Dragon would know. But . . . bombs?" 

I had to translate for Jillas sometimes during the discussion that followed. We managed to figure out that kedthalam was an enchanted metal alloy, that it had to be manufactured by dragons, and that Gaav wanted bombs made out of it, but that took nearly an hour to get across. Jillas kept making digressions into bomb designs, and Milgazia kept cracking jokes that might have been funny if he'd been in his natural form and able to use his wings and tail to aid him in the delivery. 

I don't know how late it was when I finally was able to head off to bed. It felt like it was after midnight, but as far as I could tell, the moon hadn't even risen yet. Still, it had been a long day, and I was tired. I changed into my nightgown, braided my hair loosely to keep it from getting any more tangled than it already was, and was asleep the moment my head touched the pillow. 

" ** _Child._** " 

What? 

" ** _Child._** " 

I blinked. Stone walls, statue . . . wait, I knew this place. Knew it very well indeed. The temple of the Fire Dragon King. Gone now, destroyed in the fighting when Valgaav had first revealed himself to be a dragon. And my father, Bazard Ul Copt, had died a century before that. 

"Who's there?" I asked. 

The statue . . . leaned down. My hair stood on end, and I felt my tail pop out as I took a step back, because statues weren't supposed to do things like that. Well, unless animated by Lina Inverse, but she didn't seem to be in this dream. 

Dream . . . I hadn't dreamed of this temple since I'd seen the other one, the ruined one in the high mountains, ringed with devices of torture and filled with the bones of the dead . . . 

" ** _Do you not know me, child?_** " 

I took another step back. "I . . . you . . . Vrabazard-sama?" 

" ** _Could I be any other?_** " 

"I don't understand why I'm here," I said, in a much smaller voice than I intended. "I mean, I'm not even a priestess anymore, and you speak only to the holiest . . ." 

" ** _I speak to whomever I choose. Although some do not listen._** " Vrabazard sounded irritated. " ** _Your Supreme Elder, for instance. He was so filled with his own importance that he clapped his talons over his earholes and continued with his self-destructive foolishness._** " 

"You . . . didn't want Val's people destroyed?" I said slowly. 

" ** _Indeed not. In fact, it has reduced our options rather severely._** " The statue ruffled its wings. 

_Water Dragon King._ I was starting to understand now, or I thought I was. They'd been trying to cultivate the ancient dragons as potential replacements for Ragradia, but now Val was the only one left. And he didn't want the position. 

"Does that have anything to do with why you called me here?" Did he want me to convince Val to . . . to become a god? I could have told him that that wouldn't work. Even straight out of the egg, with no memory of the past, Val had been stubborn. 

A rumbling chuckle. " ** _Child, only the one to whom he has given his heart is ever likely to persuade that fledgling of anything. We can no longer rest our hopes on him._** " 

"Then what?" Maybe I'd been living with Val too long, because I was starting to get impatient. 

" ** _We are past the point of choice. The monsters are stirring. The Chaos Dragon—_** " Vrabazard didn't sound as though he liked Gaav very much. " ** _—has done what he can. But for the sake of the world, if that young fool cannot be coaxed, he must be forced._** " 

My eyes widened. "Lord, no!" 

" ** _If he does not act, the world may fall back into the Sea of Chaos as Ruby-Eye has desired all along!_** " 

Why did I have the feeling that there was something wrong here? "This is the third piece of Shabranigdo to resurface," I said slowly, trying to buy myself time to think it through. "The second in less than a quarter-century. And you didn't seem to be nearly so worried about the one that surfaced in Rezo the Red Priest." According to Lina, there had been a couple of days between the Shard breaking loose and her putting it down using the Giga-Slave, and nothing much except a plague of trolls had happened in between. 

" ** _There was no point in informing those outside the barrier. It wouldn't have fallen until too late._** " 

"There's nothing pointing to the Dragon Gods warning anyone inside the barrier either," I said. "And making someone dream a dream of your choice doesn't really take that much power. There was a spell for it known at the temple, although I never studied it myself." I paused half a beat before adding, "Just who are you, really?" 

" ** _That . . . is a secret!_** " 

"Xel—?!" 

The temple hall disappeared before I could finish his name. I was floating in darkness with a hand clamped over my mouth. 

"I won't ask what gave me away when I was trying so hard to be caught," murmured the familiar voice in my ear. "Still, you _are_ slow on the uptake, aren't you, Filia?" 

I ignored that. It was just typical Xellos, and he didn't even try to put much feeling into it. 

I reached for Mace-kun . . . who turned out not to be there. Well, I could still tail-whip the raw garbage. Why had I been worried about him again? 

"I have orders to disturb the alliance Gaav-dono and Lina-san have formed," he said, oh-so-softly. "I have to at least look like I'm trying. Just as I was forced to leak the intended location of Gaav-dono's meeting ahead of time. This piece of Shabranigdo-sama must be the one that gave birth to Zelas-sama. It is very, very sharp. It won't expose itself unless it's thoroughly protected . . . or panicked. It will be difficult to beat this one. Even for Lina-san and Gaav-dono." 

The dream dropped away abruptly. It felt almost like I landed in my bed with a thump, although I knew I hadn't physically gone anywhere. I sat up slowly, wrapping my arms around my knees. 

Xellos. And Val. Well, I'd been worried about Val all along, but I was starting to have really bad feelings about Xellos. A slave, a double agent, and trapped. 

I turned his words inside the dream over and over again in my mind. Xellos made a point of never lying, so everything he'd said had to be strictly true, although some of it might be misleading. I'd learned a few things about reading between the lines over the twenty years we'd been acquainted, though. 

Most of the things he had said while pretending to be Vrabazard were certainly true, although I didn't appreciate being called "child". The gods spoke to whoever they chose, certainly. And the Supreme Elder had most likely done what Xellos had accused him of. Val being with Gaav instead of a free agent had certainly reduced the opportunities available on both sides of the eternal conflict. The Dragon Gods might easily believe the "for the sake of the world" bit, and maybe Xellos even did himself. 

As for the words he'd murmured in my ear in his own persona, there at the end . . . they were among the most straightforward I'd ever heard from him. He had to be really, really worried. Maybe even . . . frightened. And he'd almost sounded like he was _apologizing_ for making a mess of our last plan. That terrified me, because one thing Xellos never did was apologize. If he'd been mortal, I might have thought he was anticipating his own death. 

Had Shabranigdo found him out? Found Zelas out? I . . . maybe . . . Oh, Ceiphied, I was no good at this! I raked my hands through my hair. I needed Lina. She understood these kinds of games. But she wasn't here. 

I made a face, conjured a Lighting spell, and got out of bed. I'd just have to write everything down—every word, as best I could remember it, while it was still fresh in my mind—and talk to her about it in the morning. And to Gaav, maybe. He might not be as subtle as Xellos or as trustworthy as Lina, but he knew Mazoku from the inside out.


	45. Zelgadis

The conference we were having when the runner arrived from the front gates was fake, although no one was supposed to know that but us. We'd wanted selected people right there in the room in order to pull this off, and that had meant we needed an excuse. Simple. 

"We have a massive group of monsters on their way in, sir," the poor messenger panted. "Berserkers, trolls, orcs, even a few brass demons. They're chasing a bunch of people. Looks like part of a merchant caravan. We need to know . . . what to do with the gates." 

I closed my eyes for a moment. This was showtime, and I needed to make it look good. "Leave them open, but be ready to shut them the moment everyone's inside. I'm on my way." 

It took half an hour to get from the conference room to the main city gate on foot, due to the convoluted way the palace halls came together and the amount of general traffic out on the streets. Urgent messages could be passed by heligraph or the flickers of a controlled Lighting spell, but that was no good when I wanted an actual look at what was going on. 

Via Mazoku teleport, crossing that distance took less than a second. The world just hiccuped, and we were there. Me, Amelia, Lina, Gourry, Gaav and Val. Milgazia appeared beside us under his own power a few moments later. 

Most of the guards hadn't even noticed our arrival, but the ones who had had our new location in their line of sight had frozen and were standing there gaping at us. 

"Where's Captain Rethro?" I asked sharply, hoping at least one of them would snap out of it. 

"Right behind you," said a familiar voice, and I turned to see an equally familiar face, half-shadowed by a helmet. Rethro was a tough man, broad through the shoulders and muscular to the point that his body always gave me an impression of squareness. In some ways, he reminded me of a shorter Rodimus. "I figure we've got another five minutes or so before the shit hits the fan, sir. Didn't expect you to get here so quickly." 

"What else can you tell me?" 

Rethro shrugged. "The wagons are barreling up the main road at the best speed the horses can make. The critters seem mostly content just to follow along behind and keep them moving. Maybe they figure the horses'll crap out before they make it to the gate." 

"And will they?" 

"Don't know, sir. They were already running when we first spotted them, so maybe." 

Well, we'd picked the horses carefully. They were healthy, but of low quality. 

We'd planned from the first that they weren't going to make it. 

"Well, I can still manage a Fireball or two without . . . causing problems," Lina said, cracking her knuckles, and giving the padding she was wearing under her tunic to give the impression of continuing pregnancy a Look. 

Gaav snorted. "Who says there're going to be any left for you to fry? I haven't killed any trolls in a long time. C'mon, Val." 

"Wait!" Rethro said, but the Dark Lord and his dragon lover were already gone. "Hell, now we can't use the Jillas Guns without hitting them, too." 

_Actually, I doubt it would matter if you_ did _hit them._ Considering that Gaav could shrug off a Ragna Blade, chances were that a mere cannonball would be stopped dead on contact. But all I said was, "I doubt they'll need backup." 

"Just two guys? Against all those monsters?" Rethro actually looked worried. 

"You don't really get it, do you?" Lina rolled her eyes. "Do you know exactly how advanced teleportation magic is? I can't cast it even at my best. And if the beautiful sorcery genius Lina Inverse can't handle it, then no one fully human can, period. If those two wanted to, they could turn all of those monsters into meat paste by looking at them funny." 

"They're only wading in to fight them by hand because they enjoy it," I added, pulling out the brass-bound telescoping spyglass I'd been carrying with me ever since my adventuring days. 

My first impression of the action was, well, chaotic. The monsters had caught up with the two rearmost wagons and killed the horses that had been pulling them. Then Gaav and Val had popped in, and they were now fighting around and over the wagons while the drivers cowered behind their seats. Gaav had that familiar shit-eating grin on his face as he cut a troll in two at waist level and sent the top half flying through the air, away from the bottom. That was one troll down—their regeneration, though good, doesn't extend to regrowing half a body in a few seconds while they're bleeding to death. Val was darting in and out among a group of berserkers, leaving a carpet of green body parts on the ground. The orcs had already run for it. Where _had_ they gotten all these monsters, anyway? I mean, Shabranigdo's rebirth was bringing them out in droves, of course, but I didn't know how Gaav had convinced them to chase this specific group of wagons toward this specific gate at this specific time. I wasn't sure I _wanted_ to know. 

Then a brass demon popped up near Val's back, and Gaav's expression changed. The grin vanished, and his eyes narrowed for a moment as he said . . . something. I never did learn to lip-read, but whatever his comment was, it caused Val to make a flickering teleport that put him outside the clot of monsters. 

Gaav's eyes flashed red, and everything was fire. 

I lowered the spyglass in time to be able to watch the explosion flare and fade from a more inclusive perspective. It wasn't one of Lina's anti-bandit fireballs, that left people sunburned, singed black, and blinking. This was more like a contained blast furnace, leaving nothing behind but charred bones, half-melted weapons, and . . . 

I felt suddenly queasy even though I knew what was really in those wagons, but I forced myself to raise the spyglass again and look, to confirm what I thought I'd just seen. 

Wagon wheels, misshapen but still standing, connected by a metal frame. 

Blackened bones, held together by well-cooked sinew, still balanced on part of that frame. 

There was a clatter below me as the first real cart reached the gate and the exhausted horses stumbled inside. It was by sheer force of will that I didn't crush the spyglass as I lowered it. I hadn't expected Gaav to be so . . . thorough. 

"Zel?" Amelia said. "Tell me what's wrong." 

"Gaav fried the last two wagons along with the monsters," I growled. "And the drivers, too." 

Amelia stiffened. So did Lina. Rethro scowled and cursed. Gourry looked sad—we hadn't actually told him what was going on, because he was a lousy actor, and we needed his reactions to be genuine. At first glance, Milgazia seemed unaffected, but if you looked closely you could tell that he'd tensed up, which was subtle and perfect. 

"Mazoku were always . . . expedient," the dragon said at last. He made it sound like a curse. 

_We need the kind of incident that would make it impossible for Seyruun to keep working with us if it's taken at face value,_ Gaav had said at the planning sessions. _It isn't going to be pretty._ And now, faced with the reality of it, I was feeling a bit ill even though I knew no one had actually died. 

Gaav blinked back into place on the wall while still in the act of sheathing his sword. Val appeared behind him. The dragon seemed about to say something, but Amelia beat him to it. 

"Mr. Gaav, how could you?! Killing monsters is one thing, but those people—" 

The Dark Lord turned to look at her. "You'd have preferred to have them rampaging around inside Seyruun City?" he asked, his gaze sharp and icy cold to the point that I was wondering how much of this was really an act. 

"Well, of course not, but . . ." 

"Another thing you might want to consider, _princess_ , is that orcs and trolls and berserkers are just as much 'people' as any human. Not very fucking bright ones, maybe, but I've met humans who were just as dumb as any troll. You're killing 'people' no matter which side you take." Gaav smirked and slid his hands into his pockets. Somehow, that made him look even more arrogant than usual. 

Amelia was shaking her head, visibly fighting for words as her eyes sparkled with tears. I hadn't seen her so rattled in a very long time. I stepped in closer to her and drew her into my arms, gently guiding her to turn her back to Gaav. 

"You did that on purpose," I accused him over her shoulder. It hadn't been part of the script we'd agreed on, either. 

Gaav shrugged. "And? She isn't capable of handling the truth? Come to think of it, didn't we have a conversation like this back around the time when we first met? I would've expected her to get less naive over time, but maybe not." 

"You blew those _wagons_ up on purpose too," Lina said, her eyes narrowing. Unlike Gourry, she was a good actress. 

That arrogant smirk stayed right where it was. "And what if I did?" 

Lina kicked him in the shin. "Don't play dumb with me! You understand exactly why we care. And it isn't something you can fix! Those people are _dead_! Hey, let me _down_!" She added that last as Gaav picked her up by the back of the collar and lifted her so that their eyes were on a level. The Dark Lord's smirk was gone, replaced by a scowl, and he glared at Lina as she windmilled her arms and legs. 

"And let you fucking kick me again? I go against my race and my own nature, and _this_ is the gratitude I get? Fuck that. I'm out of here. I'll handle the rest of this myself." 

He disappeared without letting go of Lina first, leaving her to fall two and a half feet when the support of his hand vanished. She landed in a sitting position with a loud, "Ouch! Damn you, that hurt!" Which wasn't part of the script either. 

In my arms, Amelia stirred. "Miss Lina, do you need a Recovery spell?" 

"I'm not that fragile!" Lina snapped. "And good riddance to that giant astral asshole! If I ever run into him again, I'm gonna . . ." She raised her fist threateningly. And I wasn't sure if she was acting anymore. 

"We need to get someone to help the live merchants and dispose of the . . . remains." More accurately, we needed to make sure the merchants hadn't noticed anything, and no one got a close look at the "bodies", even though they were supposed to be able to stand up to casual scrutiny. 

"The . . . remains . . . are likely too fragile to be easily transported," Milgazia said. "The easiest way to dispose of them, for the time being, would be to create a pit with Bephis Bring and dump everything inside." 

"Wouldn't that cause problems if someone's next-of-kin turns up?" Captain Rethro asked. 

_That isn't going to happen._ "We can always dig everything up again. Or create an appropriate memorial on the spot, if they prefer." Although the thought of what we would have to put on it nearly had me cracking a very inappropriate smile. 

"I'll talk to the merchants." Ame seemed pretty subdued—for her, anyway. I guess what Gaav had said about berserkers and orcs and so on being people had hit her hard. And I didn't know what I could say to comfort her, because I was pretty sure Gaav was right. All of those creatures made and used tools and wore clothes and had their own languages. Berserkers even wove cloth and smelted metal and made pottery, and they had a crude form of writing involving tally sticks—Rezo had shown me some, once. There were beastmen who were less advanced. The only difference was that the beastmen were friendly to humans, while the berserkers and such were uniformly hostile. 

"And Milgazia and I will take care of . . . that." I gestured at the blackened mess outside the gate. "Find out how so many monsters managed to get this close without being spotted and dealt with, would you?" I added to Rethro, who nodded. I wouldn't have bothered, but it would have looked odd if I hadn't tried to follow up on that, and we couldn't allow anything about this to look odd. 

Milgazia teleported us both out to the burned area—I was starting to get kind of addicted to the convenience of not having to walk anywhere when there was a helpful dragon or Dark Lord around. 

We popped out right next to the burned wagon, and Milgazia contemplated the skeleton perched on the charcoal frame for several long moments before shaking his head. 

"It looks like a perfect human skeleton to me," the dragon said. "What is it, really?" 

"A golem made from a side of pork." I'd wanted to be sure that that was what they were really using, and not corpses or humans under a mind control spell, so I'd insisted on watching Gaav make them. He'd cursed at me, but allowed it. I didn't know where they'd gotten the pork, but it had come from two different pigs that seemed to have been professionally butchered, so they'd probably bought it rather than stealing a whole animal from some farmer's field. 

Milgazia's eyebrows rose. "I didn't know that was possible." 

I shrugged. "I didn't either, but Gaav made it look easy." And he had. Just a brief mumble of words and a hand-wave, and the pork had melted down into a pool of pinkish sludge, then reconstituted itself layer by layer into something that looked a lot like a human unless you closely examined details like the skin texture. 

"I wouldn't expect that adapting a spell for clay or mud golems to flesh is all that difficult, but the amount of detail that went into this is tremendous," Milgazia said. "If I needed any further proof that the Chaos Dragon is a great deal more intelligent than he looks, this would provide it." 

I frowned. I didn't really want to talk about Gaav right now. "We need to get the road clear before anyone else comes along," I prodded gently. 

"That may not be for some time," the golden dragon elder pointed out. "I expect the monster horde cleared the area quite thoroughly . . . but I do get your point." 

"Humans have a tendency to approach the sites of disasters to see what happened, as long as they don't believe they're in danger themselves," I said—sourly, because it had caused more than one problem in the past. "We're safe now because the gates are closed, but Rethro won't be able to keep them that way for more than a few hours. If I open a trench, can you get the ashes into it?" 

"I believe so, yes." 

"Good." And I began casting Bephis Bring. 

Milgazia used a wind spell, a gentle one that I'd never learned, to move the ashes and lightweight charcoal. The bones broke up just as easily as the wood remnants. That left only the metal hardware from the two carts for us to move by hand. 

I rolled the last wagon wheel over the edge of the trench and dusted my hands off on my clothes, which were in fairly sad shape already. I drew breath to cast a spell to fill it all in, but Milgazia rumbled something in Ryugo before I could do anything, and the dirt cascaded smoothly down to fill the space. 

I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand—a habit carried over from when I could still sweat—and looked around to make absolutely certain that we hadn't missed anything. Well, there were still char marks on the road, and the surrounding vegetation was down in the pit with the rest of the ashes, but there was nothing we could do about that, and one good rain should clean the worst of it up and coax the weeds into sprouting again. 

Then a bell rang out in the distance, and I stiffened. "We need to get back. That's the general alarm." Last sounded three years ago when a fire had threatened to take out the poorest area of the city and we'd had to resort to magic to put it out. 

Milgazia was frowning. "The timing . . ." 

"I don't think it's a coincidence either." Which meant that some spy had witnessed the staged argument and Gaav's departure. Well, we'd been intending to be noticed, although I'd hoped for a day or two of respite before things started to get too bad. It didn't seem as though Shabranigdo wanted to give it to us, though. 

Milgazia teleported us back to the section of wall above the gate. Captain Rethro was waiting for us there, a black scowl on his face. 

"It wasn't just the one group of monsters," he said before I could even ask about the situation. "The outpost near Senas Village isn't reporting. We think they might have been overrun. Three runners have come in to report troll attacks in areas surrounding the city, and we've started getting refugees. We may be in for a siege." 

Which meant we were going to have to clear away a lot of small fry before someone powerful took the bait and came to have a look at what had happened. Ceiphied, this was going to be tedious. 

"Double the guard and be ready to close the gates at any time," I told Rethro, who nodded. 

It was going to be a long few days.


	46. Gaav

"What _were_ you looking up in that library?" I asked Val idly. We were perched together on a rooftop in Seyruun's slum district, in an area where the buildings were so closely crowded together that no one could look up even if they wanted to. We could have gone back to the old aerie, but I hadn't wanted to get too far from the action. 

"Information," he said. Evasively, which wasn't like him. Normally he didn't try to hide stuff from me. Given the tremendous efforts I'd been making to be open with him, it was difficult not to feel a bit hurt. "I'm trying to prove a theory," he added, which wasn't much better. "I don't want to talk to you about it until I've got my ideas a bit more fleshed out . . . at which point I'm going to have a lot of questions for you. But right now, I'm afraid that asking you anything would pull me too deeply into your mindset, and this . . . isn't the sort of idea you would have." 

"Fine," I said. And, more reluctantly, "I trust you." Because I did. I always had. It was just admitting it that was difficult. I still wasn't used to openly expressing what we both tacitly understood. 

He leaned against me with a soft sigh, and I was struck again by the realization of how good this sometimes was. Just being together, and touching. The part of me that had . . . become something like mortal . . . seemed to need that contact. Not all the time, but now and again. And Val was the one person I could get it from without having to admit any weakness, because he wanted to touch me, too. 

"Do you think they're going to be all right?" he asked suddenly. 

"The humans and the goldens and your two pets, you mean? I don't see why not. Worst case, we can step in. It isn't like we've abandoned them." Or the ridgepole of this shitty roof wouldn't have been imprinting itself on my ass. 

"And I know it's stupid of me to worry, but Filia and Jillas and Gravos are all . . . kind of hopeless, each in their own ways," my dragon said. "Too gentle, too soft, too trusting. Despite everything. If I don't step in at the right moment, any of them might get killed trying to save someone else." 

I snorted. "My experience is that the less competent a person is, the more likely they are to squeak through somehow. Especially if they've already made it to adulthood. Plus, I think you underestimate your fox. He isn't entirely stupid." 

"Jillas tends to get too wrapped up in things. And he doesn't always have the best judgement." Val's voice trailed off into silence as a bell began to toll in quick, frantic _bong_ s. "That has to be an alarm." 

"Yeah." 

Neither of us moved. We didn't even bother to tense up or brace ourselves. We both knew it was just a waste of energy. Not frittering too much of that away beforehand was the hardest thing about waiting for a fight. 

It crossed my mind suddenly to wonder what the fuck we were going to do if Seyruun needed to be evacuated. Have Val cover his face and tack on an illusion to turn his hair blonde, maybe, so that he could pass for a golden dragon, because he wouldn't be willing not to pitch in and protect the civilians while they escaped. It was always so much fucking easier when you didn't have to deal with civilians . . . Since the Kouma War, I hadn't had that luxury, though. I'd needed humans too badly, to supplement the handful of rogue Mazoku I'd been able to scrape together. Not that any of those were left anymore, either. Now all I had was my loyal, crazy little dragon, and a handful of uncertain mortal allies. 

"You look like you're feeling nostalgic," Val said. 

I shrugged. "A bit, maybe. There was a time when I didn't have to deal with all this shit. There are other compensations for the current state of affairs, though." I leered at him, and he laughed. 

Shouts were being carried on the wind, and I heard troll and orc cries in addition to the humans'. And even when I concentrated, I couldn't sense anything on the astral except the uncomfortable prickle of the white magic ward surrounding the city. It wasn't time for us to make our appearance yet, but not being able to watch the battle annoyed me. All that anger and fear and bloodlust would have tasted so much better from close up, without the ward in the way. 

The fight ended. Well, that one did, at least. There were no less than four more attacks between then and sunset, and Val and I had to wait patiently through them all. The only consolation was that Lina Inverse couldn't pitch in either, and was probably just as pissed off as we were, if not more so. Being patient is something every immortal has to learn to handle, even when we think it sucks. 

The first part of the night was quiet. Almost eerily so. Val managed to doze against my shoulder for a while despite our less-than-comfortable perch, while I stared out over the moonlit rooftops and fed off the misery of the poor people below and thought about a lot of useless shit, like what I'd do to Ruby-Eye if I had him right there in front of me. The moon was almost full, which might make things a little easier if this went the way I thought it would. 

It wasn't until after midnight that I felt it. Something moving on the astral, half-hidden. Large, forboding, and familiar. _Well, hello, little brother._ Dynast didn't seem to be trying to mask himself this time—either they thought I'd really left, or they knew I'd be keeping an eye out for that tactic if they tried it again. I was pretty confident he hadn't spotted me, though. I was pretty good at squinching myself down so that my aura didn't radiate, and he'd never been all that sensitive. Val, beside me, had done his best to pull himself in so that he gave the impression of being just another golden dragon unless you checked really closely—and why would you, if you knew there were golden dragons scattered around the city? 

Val gave me a familiar hard-edged grin and touched his lance. Clearly, he'd felt it too. "What's the plan?" 

"Hasn't changed. We wait for him to be distracted, then come down on his ass like ten tons of dimos." We didn't actually have to kill Dynast, just incapacitate him for a century or so. Not that I really cared if I ended up killing him. We weren't really "brothers" in the sense implied by mortal family relationships. The world would feel odd for a while without him in it, but I'd get used to it, just like I'd gotten used to a world without Ceiphied or Ragradia or Phibrizzo, and effectively without Ruby-Eye most of the time. 

"I'd like to get closer to what's going on," my dragon said, and I almost laughed. 

"Still not used to watching things through the astral even after all the time I spent training you." I shook my head, pretending to be disappointed. 

Val snorted. "It isn't as though your perceptions are all that much clearer these days unless you stop to concentrate, you have to admit. It's the whole pinned-to-the-physical thing." 

He was right, really, but I didn't want to admit it. Instead, I shifted the two of us to a different roof near the city wall, careful to bend space in a Xellos-like way so that my trace wouldn't be recognizable even if Dynast could take time off from the fight to examine it. 

It turned out that Dynast had brought a smallish but nasty army with him. Ice demons were a specialty of his, rare outside the far north. Taller than my human form, but skinny, and burning cold to the touch. A mortal brushing against one would get instant frostbite—the frozen-to-the-bone-needs-amputation kind—and the metal rods they wielded could leave a nasty frost burn in addition to smashing things. Intelligence-wise, they were about on a par with Gourry Gabriev, which meant they were smart enough to be a real pain in the ass. Good thing the Seyruunese had the sense to stay behind their walls and shower them with spells and arrows. Fireballs worked as well against ice demons as they did against humans, although they weren't vulnerable to most other kinds of shamanism. 

Then darkness moved in the night, resolving into a figure even larger than the demons. Dynast, in his true form, had come out to play. _Now_ I tensed, hand reaching for the hilt of my sword. _Ready._

"And just what do you think you're doing?!" 

They must have had to roust her out of bed, because Lina Inverse was only half-dressed, missing her cape and short sword (although she'd thought to grab the faux-pregnancy padding), and a hank of hair was sticking out from her temple at an odd angle. And she looked pissed. Beside her, Gourry was yawning and fastening the buckles on his armour. 

"Lina Inverse," Dynast said, in a tone that suggested she was something six-legged he'd discovered taking a siesta in his breakfast porridge. Funny, I hadn't known they knew each other—or had Xellos pointed her out to him? "I'm not going to be as easily destroyed by you as Hellmaster was, even if you choose to give up on the ch—" He stopped in mid-sentence, then laughed. "Oh, excellent! I didn't think we'd already driven you so far into despair that you'd kill the brat! How amusing." 

The sorceress pulled the padding out from under her tunic and flung it away violently. "Hope you've got an appetite, 'cause I'm going to make you eat those words!" she said sharply. " _Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood that flows, buried in the flow of time . . ._ " 

"Not this time, little sorceress," Dynast said. Apparently he didn't want to deal with the sting of being hit by the spell of Dear Old Dad's name. A ball of light flowered in his hand and shot towards her. 

It was intercepted by a sword. Gourry flashed a smile as he cut the spell from the air. "Try again, pal." 

" _In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness. Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I posess!_ " 

"Ah, I see. Gaav must have made you that toy. Well, no matter. It isn't invincible—I'll just have to hit you a bit harder!" 

" _Dragon Slave!_ " 

Red light flooded both the physical and the astral. The beam struck Dynast full in his chest armour, pushing him back a couple of feet and leaving a shallow scratch behind. Dyn turned his head away, squinting. Once the light had cleared, he flicked a return blow at the wall, but Lina Inverse had already moved. I searched for her through the astral and found her in the shadow of a gate tower, but I'd spent enough time watching her in the old days that I knew exactly what her signature felt like and could pick her out from among all those other humans. Dyn wasn't nearly that familiar with her. I smirked as I realized just how much of a pain in the ass this was going to be for him. 

Maybe the mortals weren't going to need my help after all. A bit embarrassing, but it wasn't completely to my disadvantage. The more threats there were to divide the attention of any other Dark Lords who survived this mess, the less likely they were to go back to pestering me. 

Dyn was peering around wildly when a sudden barrage of Laser Breath fell on him from overhead. It was just another irritatant as far as he was concerned, but . . . distracting, and he whipped his head around again. The opening was just too perfect, and I gave up any thought of leaving this to the mortals. Instead, I nodded to Val and twisted space, sword flashing out even while I was in transit. 

Dyn noticed me just in time to throw himself out of the path of my blow. He didn't quite get clear, though. My sword bit most of the way through his left forearm, leaving it hanging by a strip of purple-black flesh, with dark astral energy spraying from the severed ends. It was difficult to see in the moonlit dark of the physical, but blazingly clear on the astral even to my crippled senses. 

"You! What in Ruby-Eye's name are _you_ doing here?! You were supposed to have abandoned them!" 

I shrugged. "The enemy of my enemy is a useful dupe," I said with a smirk. "Even if they're not allies, why the fuck shouldn't I use them to help get rid of you?" Let him wrack his brains to figure out if that was a lie or not. If he hadn't spent so long messing around with Xellos and his ilk that he'd forgotten I _could_ lie. "Are you here to talk, or to fight?" 

Dyn snarled at me, but he couldn't withdraw from a challenge like that. Especially not with a bunch of his followers watching. If anything, demons were quicker to pounce on any weakness than true Mazoku were. 

He charged at me, striking out with his good hand and doing something on the astral that I wasn't entirely sure I was getting all the ramifications of. Never mind. I dodged it, blocked his claws, and then we were moving too fast for conscious thought. Even having three heads doesn't give you enough spare brainpower to do much thinking during a Mazoku fight, and I had to give over one of mine entirely to watching the astral, anyway. 

The important part was, Dyn wasn't thinking either. Or more importantly, he wasn't _remembering_. And when the glowing blur popped out from behind me and slammed into him on the astral, he was taken entirely by surprise. 

We slowed to a stop with Khirr rammed right through Dyn's core. Val was grinning viciously, all teeth bared, and I didn't blame him. Performing a perfect interception against someone who was blurrily flickering in and out of the physical wasn't easy even for me, and I'd been doing it ever since Ruby-Eye had spawned me. 

"Keep him there," I told my dragon, and switched all my attention over to the astral. Dyn was much larger there, but still smaller than me, and Val had nailed him dead center, through his most vital part. It wasn't enough to kill him so long as he didn't try to tear loose, but he couldn't go anywhere, either. 

"You always did suck at fighting," I said—half a lie, he was just mediocre compared to me, or even Zelas—and eyed him thoughtfully. There. Yes. 

I leaned down with my left head, took a large bite of squirming astral substance, chewed slowly, and swallowed. 

Cannibalism among Mazoku is pretty common and takes several different forms. This was the most direct one, adding to my power while it depleted Dyn's. It was also going to give me a belly-ache, but I could deal with that. I just wished he hadn't been cold and chewy and slick and slightly off-tasting, like rancid seal blubber. Or that I hadn't been trying to get a psychological effect by chewing so slowly. Cutting down his confidence was all part of taking him out of the fight, though. 

I leaned down with my central head for another bite, keeping the rightmost one raised and vigilant. That was ingrained habit at this point. I'd had too many things go wrong because I was neglecting my surroundings. 

Dyn was spitting curses at me on the physical. Mostly in dead languages. I was slightly tempted to show him what real cursing was like, but the humans didn't really need to hear me doing that. 

I tore away nearly half of Dynast Grauscherra's being, and therefore half his power, before I stopped eating. I left his core untouched, though, unlike what Phibby had done to me. Dyn would be unhappy and uncomfortable for a century or so, but he'd recover. Before unpinning him, though, I put my hand on top of Val's on Khirr's shaft, and twisted the lance just so. Dyn snarled wordlessly at me. The damage to his core, while still not fatal, was going to occupy all his attention for a while. 

I let myself fall back to the physical, and nodded to Val, who pulled his lance out, allowing Dyn to stagger to his feet on the physical. He was still bleeding a black fog of astral energy, even with his tail wrapped around the stump of his arm to act as a tourniquet, and his remaining hand applying pressure to the hole in his torso. 

"Gaav, you bastard . . ." 

I shrugged. "Be glad I left you with your life. I didn't have to . . . but I'm not nearly as much of an asshole as Phibby was, either. A hundred years or so, and you'll be good as new. Go and tell Ruby-Eye that I'm going to deal with him sooner or later. Might take a while, but you can't all move around in a pack all the time if you want to get anything done, and on his own, he's weak." I smirked to emphasize my point. 

How long had it been since the last time something had gone right? I wondered that, as Dyn vanished into the astral and his pets began to withdraw. I couldn't even quite bring myself to be optimistic, given just how badly our previous attempt at ambushing Ruby-Eye had failed. But . . . our forces were almost equal now, with Lina Inverse and the Knight of Ceiphied and me and Val matched up against Zelas and Xellos and Dolphin and Ruby-Eye. 

Maybe we really did have a chance.


	47. Taben

The Dynast that returned to the Mazoku's hidey-hole in nonspace wasn't the same as the Dynast who had left. Parts of him seemed to be missing, for one thing. And so did his confidence. He knelt in front of Ruby-Eye—and me, although I doubt he gave a damn about me—with dark blood still dripping from the stump of his arm. 

"Gaav used the humans to draw me out," he said, and even I could hear the anger in his voice. "I don't know whether he's still allied with them or not, but he had no qualms about putting them to work." 

" **My Chaos Dragon appears to have grown stubborn in his old age,** " Ruby-Eye mused. 

"Lord, there is one more thing that I need to report." I was starting to be able to spot nervousness in Mazoku: instead of fidgeting or swallowing, like humans, they went still—preparing to withdraw completely into the astral, maybe. Dynast was very still right now. "Lina Inverse . . . is no longer encumbered." 

Shabranigdo rounded on a slender figure holding a staff. " **You assured me that there was no possibility she would surrender the child!** " 

Xellos smiled and shrugged. "It's possible that she miscarried naturally—too much stress and strain will do that to human women from time to time, and I can hardly see how the possible resumption of the Shinma War could fail to be stressful!" 

" **What nonsense.** " I felt my face twist into an expression it had never been meant to assume as Ruby-Eye turned back to Dynast. " **Get out of my sight, you fool. You're going to be useless for a century or more now.** " 

"Yes, Lord." Dynast vanished directly from his kneeling position. 

Ruby-Eye returned his attention to Xellos. " **The possible resumption of the Shinma War,** " the Dark Lord said slowly. " **Are you casting Gaav as Ceiphied, then?** " 

Xellos waved his hands as though to fend off the very idea. "Oh, no, certainly not! Gaav- _sama_ —" He drawled the honourific with a certain amount of irony, but Ruby-Eye let that go. "—has thrown in his lot _precisely_ with the mortals. The Dragon Gods are more likely to see him as an obstacle to be removed, since he's blocking the path to their next Water Dragon King. The only reason he dares to be so bold is that he knows they won't move. Since Ragradia died, they've stopped caring about much of anything. Unfortunately, I can't think of any way to incite them to act, and I _have_ been trying." The Beast-Priest sighed theatrically. 

" **We have enough factions running around already,** " Ruby-Eye growled. " **I had hoped to break our enemies apart and defeat them in detail, but it seems as though Gaav is attempting the same strategy. And, being so single-minded, he has been more successful thus far. But their forces are still weaker than ours in a head-on confrontation. I will take the field myself.** " 

I wondered how good Ruby-Eye was at detecting nuances of human expression . . . and how good Xellos was at reproducing them. Because there was something about the Beast-Priest's smile that made me think that might have been what he'd been planning all along.


	48. Val

I was too experienced to whoop with delight when Dynast withdrew from the battlefield, but I wanted to. This was our first real success, after all. Our first real success _ever_ , when I thought about it. We'd destroyed plenty of mid-rankers in the old days, but the Dark Lords had never bothered to show themselves in person, much less risk taking a beating. Instead I vented my emotions by throwing one arm around Gaav's neck and kissing him as hard as I could. I heard him chuckle as he responded, and felt the phantom warmth of a wing being draped across my shoulders on the astral. 

"You did well," he said when we parted. And grinned. 

"Well, I'll give you this, big guy: when one of your plans goes right, it really goes right." Lina Inverse stood some ten feet from us, hands on hips, surveying the battlefield, with Gourry at her side. _When did they get here?_ "I'm almost mad that you didn't save some of them for me." 

"There was only one of them that mattered," I pointed out. "And he won't be coming back." In fact, Khirr was still burning off whisps of the astral energy that Dynast had left behind. 

"Which leaves us with Ruby-Eye, Zelas, Dolphin, and five Priests or Generals that we have to take care of," Gaav added, turning and beginning to walk toward the gates of the city. "And they'll all probably come at us in a bunch this time." 

"At least that makes things simpler—even Jellyfish here might understand a battle plan like that." The sorceress slapped her husband on the arm. Gourry just grinned sheepishly. "Seems kind of stupid on their part, though. If I were them, my next step would be to start a human war to distract us." 

"If Dynast and the others hadn't already come out to play, that might be true," my mate rumbled. "But since they have, they can't afford to keep losing." 

"Why not, as long as we don't hurt them much?" Lina asked. 

"Do they have a morale problem?" That was Gourry. 

"They're _Mazoku_ , Jellyfish," his wife said, rolling her eyes. 

"Actually, he's right," Gaav said. "Although not quite in the way he meant. Look, Mazoku are pure-astral creatures, right? That makes us more malleable than you mortals in some ways. And loss of confidence can tie us into knots and fuck with our powers." 

The sorceress frowned. "So Ruby-Eye is worried that the lesser Mazoku will be weakened if he doesn't get a decisive victory soon. Especially the dumb ones like Grau. Okay, I can see that. They're still stronger than us, though, right? Even with Zelas and Dolphin not really wanting to pitch in. I mean, it isn't like they can actually disobey." 

We passed through the open gates of Seyruun City at that point, and the wall threw a shadow across us, leaving us in total darkness for a moment. 

"It's marginal," Gaav admitted. "One of us three is going to have to take Ruby-Eye, while everyone else tries to keep the other Mazoku from interfering. If we can get him, their side will fall apart." 

"We didn't do so well the last time we tried that," Lina said. 

"We'll know he's there this time. And you'll be able to pitch in. I'm hoping that'll make enough of a difference." 

"You sure know how to flatter a girl." 

"He's already taken," I said. Joking. 

"That's good, because so am I," Lina tossed back. "I take it we're not still doing the, 'oh, you killed two sides of pork dressed up to look like humans, boo-hoo,' thing." 

Gaav shook his head. "It served its purpose when we took out Dynast. I doubt Ruby-Eye would still buy it, anyway, even after the line of shit I tried to feed my dear baby brother. We're just going to have to tough it out this time." 

The sorceress smiled. "You know, I'm actually starting to respect you. Considering how we met, there must be something wrong with my head." 

"If you're expecting me to apologize, forget it." 

"No, you were doing what you thought was the right thing, I get that. Maybe in another couple of thousand years, you'll figure out how to do it right." 

"Right by whose standards?" Gaav was still smiling lazily. A bit annoyed, but not dangerously so. 

The sorceress spread her hands. "Human standards, I guess. Mortal ones, at least." She yawned. "Really, I'm too tired to be having this conversation right now. If Ruby-Eye decides to come back here tonight, I'm gonna be really annoyed." 

Gourry snored, as though to punctuate that. Was he really asleep on his feet? Maybe. At any rate, Lina smiled affectionately and linked her arm through his to guide him along. 

A moment later, Gaav stopped and turned back toward the city wall, where a group of people were making their way down an inside staircase. Zelgadis, Milgazia, and King Philionel . . . but not Amelia, oddly enough. 

"Hey, Phil, what's up? I'm kind of surprised to see you out here at this hour of the night," Lina said brightly. 

"Amelia lost to him at rock-paper-scissors," Zelgadis said, before the king could frame a response. "One of them had to stay behind at the palace, just in case." 

"We didn't expect this battle to be so bloodless," Philionel added. "And we have you to thank for that." 

"It may not stay that way," Milgazia said. 

Gaav shook his head. "My bet is that the next attack isn't going to happen here. Since we've poked at Ruby-Eye's fucking hole until he has to come out, he's going to make it as painful for us as possible." 

"Then where?" Zelgadis asked. 

"Zefiria." Lina scowled. "Or Taforashia, but my bet is Zefiria, since it's more of a potential danger to him, and why not kill three birds with one stone? He can be a pain in the ass, take out the Eternal Queen, _and_ have me and Sis on edge, all at once." 

"He might double-bluff us, though," I pointed out. 

My mate nodded. "And that's why we can't go anywhere. Yet." 

"But . . . if we don't get the news until too late . . ." Lina was getting . . . twitchy, I think is the best way of putting it. She certainly didn't look tired anymore. 

"I'll go," Milgazia said. "I can get word back here instantaneously if he does attack Zefiria, and—" Suddenly he went utterly silent, and something flickered across my consciousness. I had the impression of a voice speaking, far away, but I couldn't make out what it was saying. Gaav had his head cocked slightly, so he was picking up something too. The humans were all just staring at us, although Zelgadis' ears were twitching. 

"Is something wrong?" King Philionel asked. 

"It isn't Zefiria after all," Milgazia said, with the expression of a man trapped in a nightmare. "The Mazoku have been sighted . . . at Dragon's Peak. One of the other Elders just contacted me." 

Gaav grunted. "Go roll the fucking fledgelings out of bed, then. The Knight of Ceiphied, too. And the princess, if she's coming. Fifteen minutes." 

"The King in the North," I said quietly as Milgazia vanished, taking Zelgadis with him when the latter grabbed his sleeve. "We always knew it was a possibility. The only way he can really expand his power, unless he coincidentally trips over one of the other pieces." 

"We're going to be fighting him on the same ground where we fought you," Lina said thoughtfully, eyeing my mate. 

Gaav shrugged. "And? You expect me to feel fucking nostalgic? Besides, after what you and I and Phibby did to it, I'd be surprised if any of us recognizes the place." But there was a hint of a tremor in his wing, on the astral . . . 

The sorceress made a waving-away gesture. "I thought it might throw you a bit, but I guess I should have known better. Look, I need to get back up to the palace and grab the rest of my kit before we go, so . . . _Ray Wing!_ " 

Gourry came abruptly awake as the bubble of air materialized around him. He looked panicked for a moment, then settled, clinging to Lina with one hand as they soared away over the rooftops. 

"I should do the same," Zelgadis said. "Phil, do you want to come along?" 

The king shook his head. "I need to get a report from the men on the walls, since you aren't going to be here to deal with the fallout from this." 

With King Phil climbing back up to the top of the wall and everyone else headed for the palace, we were soon alone. 

"You're really not happy, are you? Going back there." I kept the words as quiet as I could. 

"It isn't one of my better memories, little dragon. Embarrassing, really. I got shot in the back because I was having so much fun playing with Lina Inverse and her friends that I wasn't paying attention, and I fucking well know better. Being reminded of that . . . it won't _throw_ me as such, but it's . . . irritating." 

It wasn't one of my better memories either—feeling him torn out of me and knowing that the last thing I'd cared about was gone—but at least the _terrain_ wasn't going to remind me of it. Still, I could feel myself hackling, and I stepped in closer to him. He sighed and put his arm around me, lowering his head so that he could bury his face in my hair. 

I hoped the coming battle was going to be the last one. I was so tired of pushing down the cold, terrifying knowledge that I might lose him again. Even the strength of his body against mine and the warm drape of his wing on the astral couldn't drive that feeling away completely. It had happened once, after all. It could happen again. 

He was stroking my hair, slowly, his hand starting from the top of my head and running down over my nape, along the length of my braid to mid-back, and then just as slowly moving back up to start all over again. 

"You've gotten pretty damned cuddly lately, you know, little dragon. You never used to be like this." 

"Would you have let me?" I retorted, not moving. 

"Hell, no! Can you imagine what kind of fucking fit Rashatt would have thrown if he'd seen us like this?" 

"Actually, yes." I smirked. There was no way he was going to admit that he was enjoying this too, but I knew he was. Or he wouldn't have bothered to hold me. I'd be just as content just leaning against him, and he probably knew it. 

"Val." 

"Mmm?" 

"We have to get rid of this shard of Ruby-Eye before it can get at the King in the North. Whatever it takes. If two parts of him fuse, it won't be possible to stop him anymore. You may not remember what he was like, but I do." 

"I remember Dark Star Dugradigdo. I imagine their personalities must be somewhat similar." Well, all right, my mind flinched away from _really_ remembering Dark Star. If I hadn't already been well on my way to insanity by that point, the non-sound of him and Volfied bickering inside my head would have driven me there. But that wasn't the point. I remembered . . . wanting there to be nothing. And I remembered Dark Star agreeing with the sentiment. "Just promise me one thing." 

"What?" 

"If you're going to go off and do something suicidal . . . don't leave without me." 

"Val . . ." 

"I'm sorry. I know you want me to wait for you to come back, but I don't think I can. I can't take that pain again." Once again, my mind flinched away from the memory of pure torment and the urge to tear apart a world because there was nothing left in it that could soothe my agony or even just make me feel less alone. No. I couldn't. I'd tear my own throat out first, because it would hurt less. 

Gaav's arm tightened around me. "All right, little dragon. You win. If . . . that happens . . . I'll make sure the two of us go together." 

"Thank you," I whispered. And, "I love you." The first time either of us had said exactly those words, although we'd kind of admitted it, obliquely. 

My mate's only response was a grunt, but I could feel him nuzzling me on the astral. That was good enough. I'd never expected him to be even as demonstrative as he was, physically or verbally. In the old days, he'd never even touched me in public, unless it was for something like a hand-to-hand combat lesson. 

It was remarkable how much things had changed between us. And how quickly. Had it even been a month since we'd re-cemented our mate-bond? I was fairly sure it hadn't. 

Sometimes I found myself wondering when I was going to wake up, or just smiling for no reason. Even with Ruby-Eye looming on the horizon, I was happier than I had ever been. Because we were together. 

There was a brief flicker of golden light as Milgazia popped out of nothingness beside us. 

"You two terrify me, you know," the golden dragon Elder said. 

Gaav snorted. "I'm not surprised. Scaring normal dragons shitless is part of what I do." 

Milgazia shook his head. "Not because of that." 

"Then why?" Gaav asked, raising an eyebrow. 

"Because in nearly fourteen hundred years of life, I have met very few beings who might truly change the world. Ragradia. Lina Inverse. And the two of you. However, I came here to tell you that everyone is now assembled in the palace's entry hall, save those of my fledgelings who are unable to transform into something small enough. We will have to leave them to fly up on their own, I suppose." Milgazia didn't look very happy about that idea, though. 

"Fine. Let's go." Gaav unwrapped his arm from me before punching us through a fold in space and landing the three of us right inside the palace's main entrance. 

The group gathered there for the trip to Dragon Valley was larger than I'd expected: not just the young dragons, the Knight of Ceiphied, and Lina Inverse with her old travelling companions, but also Filia, Jillas, and Gravos. 

I gave the fox a sharp look, and he shuffled and stared at his feet, but held his ground. 

"We don't wanna be left behind, Val-sama," he said. "We might not be able to help much—didn't get beyond prototypes on any of the bombs—but we can at least bring you lunch or something, right?" 

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. We don't have time to argue with you . . . and I don't have the right to tell you where to die, anyway." 

Jillas' smile looked forced, and his tail drooped slightly, but he didn't leave, and neither did Gravos. Someone had to have advised them, because like the humans, they were dressed in warm clothing, and Jillas had a good-sized pack strapped to his back. I just hoped that nothing in it exploded unexpectedly. 

I didn't even bother talking to Filia. She probably had more combat experience than any other dragon here except me and Milgazia, anyway—she knew what she was getting into. 

"Bunch in a little closer together," Gaav ordered. "Just because there's no reason now to keep from splashing my signature all across the astral doesn't mean I want to _waste_ energy." 

Everyone scooted a little more toward the center of the room, and Gaav strode forward, with me in his wake. I ended up standing in front of Milgazia. 

My mate didn't bother to ask whether everyone was ready. Reality hiccuped, and we went from a warm room to a cold, rocky ledge. The moon was diving for the horizon, so we wouldn't have been able to see much if three different people hadn't immediately cast Lighting spells. 

Judging from the barriers I could feel stretching across the astral, we were just outside Dragon Valley's inner protections, the ones that would have included climate control provisions and bounded the activities of the youngest fledglings. In the aerie where I'd spent my earliest hatchling years, those barriers would have been monitored even in the middle of the night. Here, though, no one appeared as Milgazia soothed them open, even though an Elder returning unannounced at this hour should have been unusual and worthy of investigation. 

I didn't have a good feeling about this. Judging from Milgazia's expression, neither did he.


	49. Filia

No aerie was ever supposed to be this quiet. Not even in the middle of the night. There should have been lookouts, at least, keeping an eye out for potential Mazoku incursions or hatchlings doing something foolish. Two or three people should have come to investigate when Milgazia opened the inner wards in an area that normally wouldn't have been used as an entrance, but there was no one. 

It wasn't as quiet as the desecrated temple where the bones of Val's people had lain. I told myself that firmly. 

I just wished I hadn't thought I was lying. 

"Maryuu-oh?" Milgazia said unexpectedly. "Can you—?" 

Gaav cut him off in mid-sentence. "There aren't any dragons here. Or any Mazoku, for that matter, unless they're really heavily shielded. Goats, I think, and the usual plants and small shit. Nothing that thinks." 

"Did you have an evacuation plan?" Val added. 

"We did, but a lookout should have remained here until and unless the area was actually overrun, while the other adults proceeded to the front line," Milgazia said grimly. "Something must have gone wrong. The message I received was cut off in mid-word." 

"You could have mentioned that before," Lina grumbled. For once, I agreed with her. "So, what exactly did the message say?" 

"Very little. 'We are under attack! The Mazo—'" The Elder shrugged. 

Gaav snorted. "Well, that really tells us a lot. We'll check the place quickly, then continue north." 

"Who put you in charge?" Lina grumbled. 

"If you've got a better idea, feel free to take over." 

Lina scowled and prodded the rocky ground with the toe of her boot, but didn't say anything more. 

Milgazia led us to a cave high on the mountainside where one of the lookouts was normally posted. He made a sound of pure surprise and backwinged as he approached the landing ledge. 

"I thought you said—" Then he stopped again, because the shadowy figure on the ledge hadn't even twitched. 

Lina was the one who flew in closer—a human using Ray Wing was more agile than a dragon on the wing, even if she was carrying another human with her. After a moment, she landed on the head of the dragon on the ledge and knocked on one of his horns. "Geez, Milgazia, you scared me there! It's just a statue! Pretty lifelike, too. Whoever carved it was good." 

" _Lighting,_ " Val murmured, creating a much brighter spell than anyone else had bothered with. It gave us a clear view of the statue, which depicted a middle-aged female black with a fine set of horns, caught in the act of twisting around to look at something behind her. The tiny details like the scale texture, horn shape, and a short, curved scar on one wing knuckle all suggested that this was a portrait of a specific dragon. "I don't think this is a statue." 

"Neither do I," Gaav said, staring at the stone head as though he thought he'd be able to see through it if he just put in enough effort. "There's something in there. It's buried pretty fucking deep, though. Given enough time I could probably figure out how to undo this, but we don't _have_ time." 

It took me a moment to clue in, and when I did, I felt sick. "You're saying that that's a dragon under some kind of petrifaction spell, and not a statue at all." 

One of the fledgling goldens who had followed Milgazia to Seyruun gagged. 

"Her name is Willa," Milgazia said. "Willa dal Karuth." 

_Oh, Ceiphied._ I wanted to sit right down on that ledge beside Willa and cry. There was a time, back before I'd first met Lina, that I probably would have. I mean, this was about the fourth or fifth most awful thing I had ever seen, ranking just after the desecrated temple of bones and the slaughter of my clan and . . . 

Now that I thought about it, I really had seen a lot of awful stuff. A lot more awful things than the fledgling priestess who had set out from Vrabazard's Shrine would have believed even _existed_. I envied her a bit, sometimes. 

"We'll come back and see what we can do for them after this is over," Val was saying, and Gaav, to my surprise, wasn't arguing with him. "And we should probably check the hatchery before we leave. Petrifying the adults and leaving the hatchlings alone so that they generate lots of tasty terror would be a very Mazoku thing to do, and the hatchery would have heavy shields." 

"We need to check the armoury and the treasury as well," Milgazia said briskly, although his expression was so painfully neutral that even I could tell he was trying hard not to react. "There are a few things there that I would prefer didn't fall into Mazoku hands. But I'll have to do those myself—I'm the only one here who can get through the wards without destroying them." 

"Do you mind if I go with you?" I blurted. I don't even know why I said it, except that the look in his eyes was like the one that I remembered from Val, in the bad old days when he'd been Valgaav. 

Milgazia blinked. "Certainly, Filia-san. You three—" He pointed to some of the young goldens. "—go check the hatchery. The rest of you, wait here. It might be rude to our guests to leave them standing on an exposed ledge, but the Mazoku may have left traps, and we at least know that nothing here has exploded." 

"Don't worry, we won't bite," Val added, flashing a grin at the nervous goldens. 

I followed Milgazia as he launched from the ledge again, following a twisty path between two cliffs that was much narrower than I normally would have chosen . . . and Milgazia was bigger than I was. I don't know how he managed not to clip a wingtip against the stone, and the ledge at the end was tiny. Milgazia transformed as he landed and stepped back to give me space. I barely managed to arrange all my talons to fit, but my only alternative would have been to land on the larger ledge above and blind-teleport down. 

"This is the treasury," Milgazia explained, leading me behind a boulder and into what looked like a shallow dimple in the rock, but was actually a tunnel. "The armoury has an easier approach, since people need to actually go there, now and again." 

"I'm surprised that anyone ever even found this place," I said. The first section of the tunnel was unimproved, twisting through the raw rock, and lit only by Milgazia's Lighting spell. 

"One of the dragons who first came north with us liked rock-climbing in her human form. Otherwise, you're right, I don't think we would ever have found it. You can't even see the tunnel unless you actually reach the ledge." 

I was about to ask about the rock-climbing dragon, but just in time, I figured out that it wouldn't be a good idea. Because whatever his answer was, whether she'd died in the Kouma War or been turned into a stone statue or passed away somewhere in between, the answer could only be painful for him. 

The tunnel abruptly straightened, and Milgazia murmured "activate lights" in Ryugo, switching on a standard set of etheric lighting globes. After that, he went quiet again, leaving me to fill the silence. 

"Milgazia, do you have a family?" I asked, then immediately kicked myself, because that had all the same problems as the question that I hadn't asked. 

But he shook his head. "I was an only hatchling, and my parents died in the Kouma War." 

"No marriage or hatchlings of your own?" 

"No. There was someone once, but when the Kouma War ended we were trapped on opposite sides of the Barrier." He smiled wryly. "And since Hellmaster died and the Barrier opened up, I haven't had the courage to try to find out what happened to her. Part of me hopes she found another male she liked and had a dozen hatchlings. The other half . . . is more selfish. What about you? Now that young Val has burst from the nest, you should have the opportunity to go look for happiness for yourself." 

Now it was my turn to shake my head. "There hasn't been time to think. I'll figure it out when this is over, I guess." 

"You would be welcome here at Dragon's Peak, you know. For a visit, or a longer stay." 

"Thank you. I'll keep that in mind." I offered him a smile. Actually, it wasn't such a bad idea. A colony of goldens who had never been involved in the massacre of Val's people . . . I might really be able to find a husband here. Assuming we managed to depetrify everyone, or that most of them had gotten away. 

We were pretty deep inside the mountain now, and the hallway made a sharp right turn—its first since we had left the twisty section near the entrance—and ended at a door. A closed door with wards that certainly looked intact to me. 

Milgazia muttered a spell and put his hand on the door, and the top half of it turned translucent. Peering through it showed me a dimly lit room full of sealed chests and cabinets. 

"It appears no one has disturbed this place, thankfully," the Elder said, lowering his hand. The spell must have been keyed to touch, because the door became opaque again. 

"What are you keeping inside that you're so worried about?" I asked. 

"Several true relics of Ragradia. Nothing on the level of the Claire Bible, but they have a certain sentimental value to those of us who knew her. And destroying or desecrating them would take the heart out of us." 

I shook my head. "I've never actually met a god, despite being trained as a priestess." Xellos impersonating Vrabazard in my dreams certainly didn't count! "She must have been . . ." And there I had to stop, because I just didn't know what words to use. I'd been taught the rote descriptions, of course, but using them in front of someone who had actually known her felt wrong. 

"Fierce and gentle, both at once. Strong and loving and wise. She believed deeply in the potential of mortals, more so than any of the other greater beings in this world, I think. In some ways, she resembled young Sylphiel, except without the scatter-brained nervousness. But she had the same instinct to help and protect and nurture. When Maryuu-oh killed her, I was too much in shock to be angry, even. It took a very long time to sink in. And even longer to understand that in an odd way, he—what he has become—is . . . her legacy." 

"Gaav?" The only way in which Val's red-headed mate resembled a dragon god was his level of power, or so I'd assumed. 

I fell in behind Milgazia as he turned away from the door and began to head back to the exit. "Again, I doubt it is possible to appreciate just how much he has changed unless you knew him before. When he came up here to attempt to negotiate right-of-way to lead an army against the King in the North, I was stunned. Not only because he had turned against his master, but by his attitude. In the old days, he would have demanded that we move aside or be destroyed, not attempted to come to a mutually acceptable settlement. Unfortunately, the other Elders were uncomfortable and stalled him, or recent history might have been quite different." 

I thought about that for a while, as I followed him out of the tunnel and into the air, but my mind kept going around in circles. Maybe I was just too tired. It _had_ been a long day. 

The armoury's entrance ledge was wider, and unlike the other one, it had been guarded. A huge black and a much smaller golden, frozen together in stone. 

Milgazia stiffened, right there in the air, when he saw them, and ended up flubbing his landing. He skewed and clipped a boulder with one wing, then slammed hard into the mountainside. 

I landed beside him. "Are you all right?" I mean, I knew he had to be bruised—I'd done things like that when I was first learning to fly, and they always hurt—but I was worried that there was something worse wrong. 

A hesitation. Then, "No, I am not, but the problem is more with my spirit than my body. Right now, I feel as I did when I lay beneath a pile of corpses on the battlefield and watched Xellos wave his hand across the sky, annihilating hundreds of my comrades with a single gesture . . . except that I can no longer muster the anger that I did then. I only feel tired and sick and sad." 

I knew that feeling. I'd experienced it when I'd seen the members of my clan throw themselves at the Overworlders, all because the Supreme Elder wouldn't allow anyone but himself to posess Galvayra. When I'd understood that he would sacrifice anything in order to prove himself right. 

I unfurled a wing over Milgazia's back, and he tilted his head toward me with a surprised expression. 

"It's going to be all right," I said. "Lina will make it be all right, if Val and Gaav can't or won't. She always does." 

Milgazia smiled the tiniest of smiles. "I admit that Lina Inverse frequently seems able to do the impossible. Perhaps I should go along with you and place my trust in her. Thank you, Filia-san." 

"Just Filia is fine." My muzzle felt unexpectedly warm. I hoped I wasn't blushing. I could fall for Milgazia, I decided, despite our considerable age difference. If he'd had violet eyes, he would have been perfect. _Ooh, why am I thinking about that raw garbage again?!_ Just because Val had said he had a thing for me? 

It was more likely that the real problem was that I didn't know what I really wanted in a boyfriend, much less a husband or a mate, I reflected ruefully. I was being such a hatchling! Still, Milgazia's quiet solidity was attractive. Xellos' constant teasing was not . . . or so I told myself. And besides, there was no way a relationship between a dragon and a Mazoku could be made to work. Val and Gaav didn't count, because Gaav was different from the other Mazoku. And he'd been much more dragonlike from the start. 

"You're thinking hard," Milgazia said. 

"About something I really shouldn't be thinking about right now," I admitted. "Let's go check on your armoury instead, so that we can meet up with the others." 

"An excellent idea." 

The armoury turned out not to have been disturbed either. It looked like turning the other dragons to stone had just been the Mazoku way of punishing Milgazia and the fledglings for taking an active part in the fighting. 

We hadn't gotten all the way back to the ledge where Willa's frozen stone body stood when I started hearing small, piping voices on the wind. Hatchling voices. 

"Mama!" 

"It's so cold out here! I wanna go back inside!" 

"I've never seen anyone red before—is he a bad dragon?" 

"Why the fuck did you have to bring them here?" Gaav's deep boom cut across the smaller, lighter sounds. 

" _Language,_ " Luna warned him. 

"Like I fucking well care if they pick up any bad habits from me! Well?" 

"We couldn't just leave them there all alone!" That had to be one of the fledglings, or at least I didn't recognize the voice. 

"Why not?" Val asked. "It's sheltered and warm and we can't take them with us where we're going. Someone's going to have to stay behind and look after them, I guess." 

I could see them now: maybe twenty hatchlings all gathered together in the lee of Willa-statue. The ones on the outside edges were shivering. A couple of them were crying, too, and the sound stabbed at something inside me, the way it always had when Val had done it. 

I swooped in for a landing, trying to get as close to the statue as possible. Once I was there, I crouched down and spread my wings. "It _is_ cold out here, isn't it?" I said to the hatchlings. "Come here and let me keep you warm until we go back inside." 

That got me strange looks from the older ones, and frightened looks from the younger ones. 

"Who are you?" asked one of the very oldest. Or at least, I thought she was one of the oldest. I had no experience judging the ages of hatchling blacks. Val had been smaller than her when he fully fledged. 

"She's Elder Milgazia's friend," one of the fledglings said, sounding a bit exasperated. 

"My name is Filia," I added. "And I promise you, everything is going to be fine." 

"Then Mommy—" 

"And Dad—" 

"And Pala-neesan—" 

"They're all going to be all right, aren't they?" the older black hatchling said. 

"We'll find a way to fix this," Val said, gesturing with his wing. "Right now, we have to go fight the bad guys who did it, though, before they do something worse." 

The hatchling frowned, taking this in. "Oh. But . . ." She sniffled, probably fighting between saying something embarrassing like, _I don't want to stay here all alone!_ and acting the way she thought a grown-up dragon would. 

"I'll stay with you." I hadn't known I would make the offer until the words came out of my mouth, but the moment I did, I knew it was the right thing to do. Another golden dragon wasn't going to turn the tide on the battlefield, but here, I could really make a difference. "What about the eggs?" I asked. "You . . . did check, didn't you?" 

"They're all packed up nice and warm in the sand beds," said the fledgling who'd identified me to the hatchlings. "We didn't want to try to move _them_. If we broke one . . ." He didn't really have to finish the sentence. 

"All right," I said. "Then you can help me move the hatchlings back to the nursery. I expect there are plenty of supplies there if it's only going to be these children plus me." 

"And us," Gravos said suddenly. 

I blinked. "You?" 

"Seems to me we might be able to do some good here, Boss," Jillas said. 

" . . . All right." They were adults, sort of, and I had some idea what was and wasn't within their capacity. And they wouldn't be in the others' way during the battle ahead if they stayed here. 

"We'll make ourselves useful," the fox said. "Promise." 

That was what I was afraid of . . . but I wasn't going to tell them so in front of the hatchlings. 

It was a well-appointed hatchery, or at least I thought it was. I hadn't really spent much time in one since I'd been a hatchling myself. The one at Dragon's Peak was larger than the one I remembered, but then it had to accommodate blacks as well as goldens. Looking at the knot of gathered hatchlings and the door to the egg room, I felt a moment of panic. Oh, Ceiphied, could I even _do_ this? What if something went wrong? The eggs had to be watched constantly, so that the packed sand that kept them warm could be removed if one started hatching, and how could I tell if a black dragon hatchling had just a sniffle or something worse, or— 

I gritted my teeth. _Panic later,_ I told myself, and mentally thanked Val for giving me that practice. 

"Now," I said, forcing myself to sound calm, "I know that you're all supposed to be asleep right now, but I'm going to need someone to help me watch the eggs . . ."


	50. Zelgadis

I'd travelled through mountains before, of course. We all had. But flying through mountains was even colder, with winds that tugged at my parka and whistled into the hood to freeze my ears . . . and my body was relatively impervious to cold. I hated to think what Ame and the others were dealing with. If I'd had the time, I would have taken some heat packs with me, but we hadn't had the necessary half an hour to root them out of the back of a storehouse. 

Lina, beside me, was fuming quietly to avoid drawing Luna's attention. I wasn't sure what had her in such a bad mood—not having had a chance to take on Dynast Grauscherra herself? The danger we were about to throw ourselves into? What we'd found at Dragon Valley? Having to leave her unborn baby behind in another woman's body? Or simply the cold and being low on sleep? 

"There!" That was Val, flying abreast of Milgazia. Gaav was higher up and a little further back, where he could keep an eye on everything. I would have expected having his shadow fall across me to make me nervous, but it didn't, quite. Really, the Chaos Dragon was less frightening than Rezo had been during those last terrible years. More powerful, but less capricious. 

"There _what?_ " Lina yelled, since she couldn't see the ground through Milgazia's body any more than I could. 

"Monsters," Gaav boomed. "A whole fucking carpet of them. All headed for the crater. Proof that the bastard is around here somewhere." 

He and Val tucked their wings and dove past Milgazia and the fledglings from Dragon Valley. I was able to see moving black dots—orcs? Trolls?—past the golden dragon's shoulder as the creatures below tried to take shelter from their fly-by. 

They both pulled up again a moment later, pumping their wings to bring them up level with us again. Gaav's aerodynamics had to be complicated, with all those heads. Rezo probably would have asked him questions about it. I was more interested in what was going on below. 

"Looks like those are just the stragglers. They're probably already in the fucking crater." 

That didn't sound good. "Are we too late?" 

I hadn't meant to actually say it, and when I did, it was as though the area became twice as cold. 

"Not yet," Gaav boomed. "The King in the North's still asleep—if he wasn't, I'd know. The Planes Chart hasn't tilted that far." 

That made me feel a little better. Not much, but a little. 

I could see the edge of the crater up ahead, a solid wall just as high as the mountains around it. Milgazia surged up and over, and the weak light of early morning revealed devastation. 

The last battle of the Kouma War hadn't just scoured the crater clean of all life, it had gone all the way down to the bedrock and turned it into a fused, glassy surface. Snow eddied across it here and there, but it seemed to have a hard time clinging except where something else lay on top of the almost-glass. There was certainly no vegetation, even after a thousand years. 

It took us half an hour to get to the center. Flying. I wondered exactly how big that meant the crater was . . . but in order to calculate that, I'd need to know the speed of a dragon in flight. Too large, was my only conclusion. 

Then Milgazia tilted his wings and banked, giving me a better look at the ground, and I was tempted to say something . . . Gaav-like. 

There on the ground was a massive chunk of ice with a figure frozen inside it. We should have been too high up for me to be able to see details, but I somehow _knew_ it was a man with long, dark hair, wearing the robes of a mage or a priest. Lei Magnus. The second-greatest sorcerer humanity had ever produced, after Lina Inverse. And the first Shard of Shabranigdo to awaken from its sleep inside a human being. 

That wasn't the reason I wanted to say the kind of words I'd fought to keep my adoptive son from learning, though. No, the problem was that there were several people fanned out around the huge chunk of ice. Or more likely several Mazoku, although it was impossible to see more than small dark blotches from this height. 

Gaav and Val were already on their way down. Milgazia couldn't just dive, though, not when he had passengers. He had to descend more slowly, spiralling, so that he wouldn't throw us off. The fleglings followed our spiral in a ragged plume. 

By the time we got to the ground, the posturing had already started. 

"Gaav." The small-dragon-sized winged wolf that had positioned itself between us and the ice crystal had a pale, sparkling coat. 

"Zelas," the Chaos Dragon rumbled. He was still bigger than her, but Milgazia wasn't. Was this really the same being as I'd caught glimpses of during the battle at the old temple? The old descriptions did suggest this was her true appearance, but . . . well, I guess I had a hard time imagining Xellos deferring to a wolf. "Do you have anything interesting to say, or should I just fill in the fucking 'thou shalt not pass' bit myself, so that we can get down to business?" 

"Only if you're in a hurry." 

"We didn't want things to end up this way," added a different voice, and a human-sized figure strolled around the side of the wolf. A woman wearing a long dress. Her hair was the dark blue of the depths of the ocean. "It's unfortunate. I'd wanted our first meeting in a thousand years to be . . . well, at any rate, not this." 

"Wasn't my idea," Gaav rumbled. 

"Or ours either, as you know. Anyway, let us, as you said, get down to business." The woman—Deep-Sea Dolphin?—pulled a trident out of thin air. "The odds are in our favour, you know," she added. 

"I'm not so sure," Gaav replied. And breathed out with the two heads that hadn't been talking. 

Red energy crackled over the ground, and the snow puffed to vapour. Zelas made a chuckling sound and stepped back, while Dolphin flashed to the left. Gaav charged forward and bowled Beastmaster over, while Val slipped past them and headed for the lump of ice behind her . . . and the figure standing at its base, with both hands pressed against the cold surface. It wore a hooded cloak that made it impossible to get a good look at it, but who else could it be but Taben? Ruby-Eye wouldn't send a minion to break the rest of himself out of the prison Ragradia had created. 

A slashing gesture from Dolphin sent a wave of cold water at Val. It froze almost instantly, and I could see ice forming on his scales. 

"Shit!" the last ancient dragon snarled, and spun around to face her. 

"That's right, eggling—you're _my_ opponent," Dolphin said with a smile. 

"Guys, get her attention," Lina said. "Any way you can. Milgazia, I'm going to get down now. Try to keep her from seeing what I'm doing for a minute or so." 

"I understand," Milgazia said. Lina and Ame and I all used a touch of Levitation to ensure we landed upright on the snowy-slick floor of the crater, but Gourry and Luna had to slide down the dragon's shoulder. Apparently Gourry hadn't expected the ground to be quite that slippery, because he almost ended up falling on his rump before he recovered. He never dropped his sword, though, or pointed it in any direction but at Deep-Sea Dolphin. 

I shook my head. _We have to be out of our minds._ I mean, we had beaten Shabranigdo (twice!), Hellmaster, and Dark Star, but that had all been when we were a lot younger and stupider . . . and it just meant we knew what kind of thing we were getting into here. I wasn't going to run away, but sometimes I wished that someone else would step up and take the initiative to save the world. 

I pulled out my sword. " _Astral Vine!_ " The spell itself was nothing special, but it was an easy way to attack a Mazoku, and I could sustain it for a long time. Besides, no other spell I could cast would be any more effective against a Dark Lord, or any other high-ranking Mazoku. Even a double Ra Tilt from Ame and I wouldn't do more than sting them. 

" _Lords of Darkness and of the Four Worlds,_ " Lina murmured from somewhere beyond Milgazia's wing, invoking her talismans in preparation for an augmented spell. I didn't have time to listen to the rest. Instead, I caught Gourry's eye and jerked my chin to the left. He nodded. Ame raised her eyebrows at me and made a small gesture to the right, and it was my turn to nod. 

The coordination was necessary for our attack to do any good at all. First, I rushed straight at Deep-Sea Dolphin without any finesse at all, inviting an attack. My job was to occupy her trident while Ame distracted her with spells and Gourry attacked more seriously from an angle. If we were lucky, that would give Val the few seconds necessary to break free. 

Metal clashed against metal, and I was nearly knocked over. Like a dragon's, or mine for that matter, Deep-Sea's strength didn't match her appearance at all. It took all the force I could bring to bear to lock her trident in place, and I could feel my arms aching already. 

" _Elmekia Lance!_ " Ame cast. I wasn't sure that was even going to sting Dolphin, but it was quick to cast and affected the astral. The Dark Lord grimaced as white light struck her shoulder, but she didn't so much as turn her head. 

Gourry came in low . . . well, low for him, given his height. His sword struck Dolphin's side just above her waist and sank in for a moment. With Gaav or Shabranigdo, it would have bounced off, so for a moment I thought he might actually have hurt her. But when he pulled the sword out, it turned out not to have made a mark. Even her dress healed instantly. 

"You can't hurt me," she said with a smile . . . and Val's tail, with timing so exquisite I was sure he'd been waiting for her to say something like that, hit her in the face. "Ugh!" 

She turned toward the dark-scaled dragon, who was now heading for the block of ice as fast as four taloned feet could carry him, but Gourry blocked her. "Oh no you don't, lady!" 

And then, loud and clear from behind her, Lina's voice. " _Ragna Blade!_ " 

I jumped back as Lina brought down her double handful of crackling blackness. She caught Dolphin in the shoulder, like Ame had, and the Dark Lord said something she must have learned from Gaav. The Ragna Blade penetrated a good six inches into her, and when it faded, it left a hole behind, a wedge cut out of her shoulder. She didn't bleed. Instead, the cut gave us a stomach-churning look into the astral, or at least I was pretty sure that was what I was seeing. 

"An interesting spell," the Dark Lord said, scowling and rubbing her injured shoulder. "I thought Xellos was exaggerating when he described it, but apparently not. However, lacking one of the Dark Star weapons or the courage to cast your most powerful spell, that's the most you can do, isn't it?" 

" _Flare Burst!_ " Val's voice was loud enough to override anything I might have said, and the flash of bright, bluish light left afterimages burned into my retina. I'd never heard of the spell before, either, but I could feel its power. It was probably something requiring a dragon-sized bucket capacity. 

"I'm sorry, Val. Not this time." 

" _Xellos,_ " the dragon snarled. I was only able to throw a quick glance in the direction of Lei Magnus, but it was enough to show me that Xellos was indeed there, between Val and the hooded figure, holding his staff up in front of him and creating some kind of shield. Val's talons bounced off when he swatted at it. 

Then Dolphin's trident slid against my sword and tried to pull away, and I had to return my attention to her. "Oh, no, you don't. You're not going anywhere." 

Deep-Sea laughed. "So it's a race, then—we win if we break the other part of Shabranigdo-sama free before Gaavvie's pet dragon can get through Xellos' shield. How . . . ridiculous." 

Lina rolled her eyes. "Well, if you don't like it, you _could_ just pack up and leave. We won't stop you." 

"Indeed, _you_ won't," Dolphin said, casting a sidelong glance at the big chunk of ice, which was now visibly starting to melt. 

"I guess there's no choice, then," Lina said with a hard-edged grin. 

"As you say." Dolphin responded with a razor-edged smile of her own. _Female bonding is scary._

" _Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood that flows—_ " 

_Oh, hell._ I thought Lina had grown out of the habit of flinging Dragon Slaves around on crowded battlefields. I should have known better. I disengaged from Dolphin and ran around to Lina's other side. Gourry was made of sterner stuff, or maybe just more attuned to Lina's rhythms. He kept crossing weapons with the Dark Lord right up until Lina hit " _by the power you and I possess!_ " and then threw himself toward his wife. 

" _Dragon Slave!_ " 

I have to admit that the sight of the ball of red flame hitting Dolphin in the chest with a huge _whompf!_ and the fountain of snow and pebbles rising into the sky was satisfying and impressive, even if we knew it wouldn't be very effective. It had bought a few more seconds, and that was what mattered most. 

" _Dwelling within the eternal and the infinite, source of all souls,_ " I began as the messy cloud began to dissipate, " _everlasting flame of blue . . ._ " Beside me, Ame echoed the words. " _Let the power hidden in my soul be called forth from the infinite!_ " Dolphin was . . . there. That silhouette, just beginning to come clear. " _Ra Tilt!_ " 

Double flash of blue-white. It didn't even stagger the Dark Lord we were facing, though. And she was smiling as the cloud of blast debris from the Dragon Slave cleared. 

I didn't like that. I didn't like it at all. 

And then there was a blast from behind that threw me a good ten feet, and a bass roar that didn't sound at all like Gaav's. 

We'd run out of time.


	51. Val

Xellos was throwing every ounce of power he had into that shield, and while I thought I could get it down eventually, I couldn't figure out a way to overwhelm it quickly. It blocked the astral, too, so I couldn't sneak past it there. Of course not—that was Xellos' own preferred method of operation. I covered my talons with a layer of astral force and battered away at the shield, acutely aware of the block of ice containing Lei Magnus melting away as I tried to think of some way to speed things up. Khirr wasn't really much more powerful than the god-energy I was still infected with, so it wouldn't help. 

The burst of power I'd experienced during the fight at the temple could have cut through, but even if I could have found some way to draw on that energy without the consecrated stones of the temple's foundation to act as a link, it would have meant playing right into the hands of the Dragon Gods. The only other thing I could think of that might work was Lina Inverse's Ragna Blade spell, since it could cut through damned near anything. But I'd never cast it, only seen it cast, and I wasn't sure I remembered the Chaos Words. If I tried and got them wrong, well, if I was lucky, the spell would fizzle. Or it might explode in my face, or do any number of other interesting things. 

Still, it didn't look like I had much of a choice. 

" _Sword of the cold dark void,_ " I said, and felt energy start to eddy around me. " _Free yourself from the chains—_ " 

No good. The spell fell apart. Damn! If that wasn't the line, then what was? Not chains . . . bonds . . . _heavens'_ bonds, that was it . . . I drew in a breath and began again. 

" _Sword of the cold dark void, free yourself from the heavens' bonds. Become one with my will, one with my body, and let us walk the path of destruction together._ " I could feel the energies swirling around me, plucking at my talons. I curled them as though to grip a sword, and felt the energies begin to congeal, crackling against my palms. " _Blade that can smash even the souls of the gods—Ragna Blade!_ " 

It was more of a messy quarterstaff of blackness than a blade as such, but I brought it down on Xellos' shield with a powerful blow, knowing that I was going to leave myself open for a counterattck, and not caring. Besides, Xellos was directly in the line of my strike. 

The shield shattered, falling away into bits. I even felt it hit Xellos, although only just barely, as he flickered out and in again. I mouthed a curse as I realized _he'd_ realized why I'd aligned my cut the way I had: because it intersected both him and the creature that had once been Taben. My spell grazed the Beast-Priest again as he appeared behind his master, grabbed him, and bent space. The Ragna Blade tried to cut through the folds in the astral, but the energies there slowed it just enough for Xellos to get clear, and I snarled in helpless rage as the crackling blackness sliced into the half-melted ice prison and then on into the bedrock before it dissipated. 

_Crack._

The sound just happened to fall into a half-second of silence. I looked up and felt my eyes widen in horror as I saw that there was a growing area of spiderweb fissures forming on Lei Magnus' prison. 

_Crack!_

A piece of ice the size of a human head tumbled down onto the ground, followed by a gush of water. 

Inside the ice, Lei Magnus' eyes opened, and the world was thrown into chaos. 

Or at least, that's what it felt like to me. For a moment, it was as though everything was tilting. I staggered half a step backward, feeling like I was sliding, before I managed to get my feet under me again. 

The staff in Lei Magnus' hands swung out, and the ice imprisoning him shattered entirely, scattering all over the ground in chunks. His eyes flashed red as he stepped down out of his thousand-year prison. 

I stared at him, feeling a cold that wasn't due to the temperature here at the crater needle down my spine. I couldn't speak. I didn't want to attract his attention. Fortunately, he didn't seem interested in me. He was looking at Taben-Shabranigdo. 

" **There is no time for us to rejoin now,** " Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo said. His voice made my earholes ache, and the other fights—Gaav versus Zelas and everyone else versus Deep-Sea Dolphin—halted as he spoke. 

" **I agree,** " Taben-Shabranigdo said. Their voices were subtly different, although I wasn't sure how I could even tell. " **Our first priority should be the traitor.** " 

I growled. _Over my dead body is the only way you're going to lay a finger on my mate!_

Two sets of glowing red eyes glanced at me for a moment. I raised my head, refusing to let myself be intimidated, and glared right back at them. 

" **Perhaps it would be more efficient to deal with the mortals first,** " Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo mused. " **They are often more trouble than they initially seem they will be.** " 

" _Ra Tilt!_ " 

"No, Ame!" 

A blue flash hit Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo, who stiffened, looking . . . indignant. 

Well. I didn't have much choice now, did I? I might not be able to kill him, but I could keep him occupied until someone else did. 

" _Sword of the cold dark void,_ " I whispered for the second time in less than ten minutes, and gabbled the rest of it off at high speed, my voice rising on, " _Ragna Blade!_ " 

I swung as soon as it had coalesced in my hands, relying on centuries of Gaav's training rather than conscious thought to make the spell find its mark. Although I did suddenly wish that I'd trained more with swords. And I'd never worked with weapons in my dragon form, since I hadn't be able to fully transform as a Mazoku hybrid. 

The shock as the crackling black of the spell was blocked by Lei Magnus' staff was punishing. Gleaming ivory-white . . . I hadn't realized it before, but what he was holding had to be the Staff of Bone, which was a part of Ruby-Eye's astral body and not a conventional weapon at all. The same weapon the other piece of Ruby-Eye had used to hurt Gaav, back at the temple. 

Setting my jaw, I swung again. It must have looked ridiculous, a full-sized dragon fighting a human-sized Dark Lord using a giant, messy weapon made of compacted black lightning. And while I could sustain it much longer than a human like Lina Inverse, the Ragna Blade was still drawing down my reserves fast. I was gambling on neither Ruby-Eye nor Lei Magnus having much experience at this kind of fighting—physical, human-form, with a weapon. 

And that might even have been true, but I'd made an altogether different mistake. 

There was a sudden pain in my shoulder, as though something my own size had bitten me, and I roared and lost my mental grip on the Ragna Blade. 

I'd forgotten that there were two of them. 

The attack had been pure-astral, but I could still feel phantom blood trickling down my shoulder where my essence was leaking from me. I snarled as I turned, trying to find a position where I could see both Shabranigdo-bits at the same time. I ended up with my back to the shattered ice prison, which was really not comfortable. The water that had flooded out of it had frozen again, leaving a slick surface on which my talons scrabbled for purchase. 

Lei Magnus flipped a hand, and Taben's body nodded. I wasn't sure what they'd communicated, although I was pretty sure it didn't mean anything good for me. 

Then Taben's body . . . pretty much exploded. Sprays of blood and small chunks of flesh splattered the ground in arcs as something much larger surged up out of its former container. Above us, the sky, already clouded over, began to take on a baleful red hue. 

Ruby-Eyed Shabranigdo was here. 

His form bothered me, for some reason. The shape of the limbs, of the main head with its smooth, high dome, oddly human face, and far-too-many fanglike teeth . . . none of it was _right_ , somehow. As thought it didn't adhere to the laws of physicality and perspective. And maybe it didn't. Maybe more of Ruby-Eye's astral self was projecting into the physical than normally happened with the other Dark Lords. Or maybe he was just trying to give us all headaches. 

Before anyone else could do anything, I fired off my breath weapon into his face. That got me a violent headshake, a steaming black stripe along his cheekbone, and a baleful look. 

Well, at least I'd done a little bit of damage. I didn't get a chance to try it again, though, because the next moment, there was a ball of crackling red energy the size of my head headed in my direction, and when I dodged that one, there was another and another and another behind it. I wasn't sure, but I thought there were five or six auxiliary heads focused on attacking me. Damn it, what was everyone else doing? The only one I was sure of was Gaav, who had gone back to trying to chew Zelas to bits. Lei Magnus, I couldn't spot in the handful of half-seconds I had available to look for him, and that bothered me. Dolphin seemed to be playing with the fledglings, just toying with them, laughing while they bugled in rage. In my opinion, it was just as well she wasn't taking them at all seriously. Milgazia was somewhere to my left, the humans didn't cross my line of sight, and Xellos . . . I had no idea where Xellos was. That could end up being very bad. 

There was some kind of spell eruption over by Milgazia an instant later, and the golder dragon Elder called out half-familiar Power Words in Ryugo to establish a thick barrier. Two people cursed simultaneously. One of them was a muffled-sounding Lina Inverse, the other . . . Lei Magnus. There he was, cut off from the humans by Milgazia's barrier. He could probably get through it if he wanted to, but it was probably more efficient for him to wait for Milgazia's power pool to be drained. 

An energy ball just creased the edge of my wing, leaving a painful burn and making the feathers puff instantly into ash. I'd let myself get distracted. Grimly, I turned my attention back to dodging, hoping that someone else would come up with an idea soon, because I was fresh out. 

" **Gaav.** " Apparently, Lei Magnus had decided to try something else while he waited on Milgazia. As far as I could tell, my mate was ignoring him, though, and just continuing to tangle with Zelas. " **Gaav!** " 

When Gaav continued to ignore him, Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo spun the Staff of Bone in his hands, and I lunged forward, willing to bleed if that was what it was going to take, because I was _not_ going to allow a repeat of the scene outside the temple. No one was doing that to my mate _ever_ again. I barreled toward the threatening piece of Ruby-Eye with a roar . . . and Gaav suddenly swung around and slammed Zelas into Lei Magnus. 

I felt a little embarrassed. Of _course_ he'd been ready for something like that. Gaav hadn't been born yesterday, after all—he was the one who'd taught me most of what I knew about fighting. I had to trust him. 

Lei Magnus had managed to stay upright despite getting hit in the chest by who-knew-how-many pounds of winged wolf, and he slid to a stop a few feet from his original position. 

" **Come here, stubborn son of mine—** " 

"Fuck off!" One red head breathed in his direction while the others still had their attention on Zelas. The Shard of Shabranigdo blocked the jet of redness with his staff. "I told the other you that there's no way I'm going back to being your tool. Maybe with your brain turned into an icecube you missed that." 

" **Did I say I was offering you a choice? You _will_ come to heel, Gaav.** " 

_Oh, hell._ A shot from Taben-Shabranigdo creased my shoulder, but I barely felt the sting. I was already bracing myself for much, much worse. 

Gaav tried to roll himself and Zelas into Lei Magnus, but the winged wolf wasn't cooperating, or maybe she didn't understand what was going on . . . no, that didn't sound like Zelas. She'd probably been ordered not to attack Ruby-Eye, somewhere back in the depths of time. In any case, Lei Magnus dodged another diffuse red bolt from Gaav, and raised the Staff of Bone to point at my mate. 

Although I was braced for the pain this time, I still almost crumpled. It felt like someone had stuffed a hand inside my skull and was trying to squeeze my brain to mush. Gaav's and my roars were loud enough to shake the ground. Thankfully, it only lasted a moment, but it left me feeling shaky. 

" **How could you possibly want to preserve this flawed, terrible world? A world where everything dies, no matter how much you value it. Obscene! And if we fail to destroy this world and start over, it will all continue happening! How can you want that?!** " 

"S'what she wanted," Gaav replied briefly, as he shook his entire body, trying to dislodge Zelas. 

" ** _She?_** " 

Somehow, my mate forced out a chuckle. "Your _mom_. The universe wasn't set up this way by accident, you stupid fucker—the Golden One _likes_ it this way. Even if you did manage to destroy this universe, she'd probably set the next one up in exactly the same way. I'd bet she even thinks the flaws make it more interesting." 

" **I should have known better than to bother to listen to you. What brainpower you have is aimed at one thing, after all. Dolphin, pin this fool down, since your sister seems unable to secure him completely on her own.** " 

"As you wish, Shabranigdo-sama." 

Gaav made another violent attempt to throw Zelas off, but she clung to him like Lina Inverse to a plate of cheeseburgers until a bunch of tentacles wrapped around him as well. I couldn't see the main body of Dolphin's new form, but it had to be squid-like, since there were too many tentacles for an octopus. _Why do I care?_ The main point was that she was holding my mate down, not how many arms she was using to do it with! 

" **You are merely a part of me, or had you forgotten that? And if I can no longer use you, than you are of more value as a source of power than as an independent entity. Now, return whence you were spawned!** " 

Gaav roared and struggled frantically as motes of red and black began rising from his skin, and I could feel something pulling at me from within, trying to draw my power and essence out along the mate-bond. I snarled, set my feet, and threw all my strength into pulling back, into holding onto my mate's essence. A blow slammed into my back and knocked me forward several feet, but I hung on grimly to my concentration even though I could smell my flesh sizzling. 

Gaav was holding onto me, too, and refusing to let go, although I could see the pain in the eyes of his nearest head when there was a momentary pause in his attempts to thrash free of Zelas (now sitting on his back and weighing him down) and Dolphin. He'd taken me at my word, that I wanted to go down with him. Even if that meant both of us being sucked into Ruby-Eye. And if one of us didn't think of something fast, we would, because I could feel the mate-bond dragging at me, and my mental grip on my body starting to slip. 

We were losing. 

The part that pissed me off was that we shouldn't have been. Okay, _I_ might not have been adding much weight to our side of the scales, but Gaav's power was roughly a tenth of what Shabranigdo had originally possessed, and Lei Magnus was only a fourteenth. The Taben-Shard was still trying to turn me into primitive dragon cuisine and not participating directly in the tug-of-war. In other words, Gaav should have been able to pull free, but the bond of a Mazoku to its parent was too strong. And I couldn't cut it, because I couldn't _see_ it. I'd been working on piecing the theory of it together when I'd been raiding Seyruun's libraries, but I hadn't been able to come up with a way to affect it. 

Or . . . 

Wait. 

There was one level, one place where the bonds between Mazoku and their spawn had been visible to me. Symbolically, but you can't learn magic without learning you can affect the real world by manipulating symbols. 

The problem was, could I find that place again? On my own, and under these circumstances? 

I scrambled around behind Milgazia, putting his shield between me and Taben-Shabranigdo for a much-needed respite. It put him and the humans at risk, but if I couldn't manage to do this, they were probably dead anyway. 

Closing my eyes, I tried to picture the very strange place that Valwin had shown me, with its glowing, multi-coloured manifestation of the Planes Chart and dangling fractal mess of seals. While Shabranigdo was trying to pull my mind out of my head, and my burns stung and . . . ugh. 

Start again. I knew how to meditate. I'd learned that as a hatchling during my very first lifetime. Most ancient dragons did it quite a lot, although I never had until Gaav had beaten into me that I needed to understand the inner shape of my power and its effect on the astral before I could control it. Learning to focus on the astral during a fight without forgetting to defend myself had been a lot like this. Flow with the distractions without closing them out, because closing them out could mean my ass getting taken to the cleaner's . . . 

I managed to find the astral, which wasn't what I wanted and was . . . dismaying. I could see my mate's substance boiling away and being absorbed by Shabranigdo, his astral body already slightly translucent, and the strain on the mate-bond—it was like a multi-strand cable here, and a few strands had already snapped. Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo looked a lot like Luna Inverse, with a human-shaped shadow in the middle of a larger, ill-defined figure with lots of heads, bits of which were boiling off and being drawn in the direction of another giant translucent monster and a different human figure. Unlike Lei Magnus, who seemed to have given himself over entirely to Ruby-Eye, Taben was curled in a fetal position, unmoving. He might even have been dead. Between me and them was the dome of Milgazia's shield, with a familiar cone throwing itself at it, and a couple of bits of dead Ceiphied slopping over to the outside. But none of that was any help to me. 

I needed to find that other place, which might have been a deeper layer of the astral . . . or altogether separate. And I had no guide to show me the way. Gaav might know, but I didn't dare distract him from trying to survive. And I didn't have a convenient set of temple foundations to plant my talons on. 

. . . But there was another source of holy power nearby. 

_I can't believe I'm even considering this._ The phantom taste of half-rotted god coated my tongue, followed by the taste of bile. _Ugh._ Just the thought was making a mess of my stomach. And Luna would probably want revenge on me after this. But I couldn't think of any other way. 

I looked more carefully at the Ceiphied-bits that were slopping through Milgazia's barrier. Hard to tell, but I thought I had a limb and a tail. The tail was nearer to me, so I pinned it with my talons, looked at it dubiously, and forced myself to duck down, tear a chunk loose, and swallow. 

If anything, it tasted worse than it had the first time I'd encountered it. And one mouthful didn't seem to do anything, so I had to take another and another and another, until the dead god's tail was down to the bone and I was feeling sick and stuffed. I belched, and that vile, rotting flavour coated my tongue again. Inside the barrier, Milgazia seemed to have noticed I was there and was staring at me as though he thought I'd gone out of my mind. _Come on, damn you . . ._ The divine power inside me didn't seem to have reached a high enough level, or maybe the Dragon Gods were barring me from that place . . . Oh, hell, it felt like I'd gained a few tons, and the astral was pulling on me, trying to suck me down to a deeper layer . . . My first instinct was to try to fight it, but it occurred to me in a flash that maybe this was how you got to that place, so I let the suction take me. 

Normally I didn't go more than two or three layers into the astral. Gaav had taken me down deep a couple of times, to familiarize me with it, but he'd also warned me that it was never the same twice. This time, I felt like I was sinking into an ocean, down into darkness. I couldn't see very much. It was like being alone in a small room, with nothing to distract me except my own pain and nausea. Ugh. 

Down, down, down . . . I could feel strange small fluttery things brushing against the edges of my awareness, but I didn't have the skills to pick them out from the mass of the astral when I went looking. It was hard to keep track of time, not that it works the same way on the astral to begin with. Down, down . . . I drifted against something more solid, and the movement stopped. Feeling around suggested that I'd hit some kind of membrane, intended more to keep what was on the other side separate from this one than it was to keep people out. 

Well, then. 

I slashed at it with extended talons, and fell through into glowing darkness. Spreading my wings arrested my fall, but then I hit the end of some kind of tether and was tumbled over in the air. 

Tether? 

The universe was swinging wildly around me, and it took several precious seconds for me to stabilize myself and lower my speed to something more reasonable. Only then was I able to look up and see the Planes Chart, and the sigil I was dangling from. Gaav's, of course, and the mate-bond sunk deep into the core of me. Intact. 

But that didn't mean everything was well. Not by a long shot. My mate's sigil was faded, the line linking him to Ruby-Eye grossly swollen and bright red with energy rushing in to feed Shabranigdo. Well, the hell with that! I'd broken my own linkage to the Water Dragon King, so I should be able to break this bond too. 

Flying with a tether stuck to you is difficult, so I twisted around, curled my talons around the mate-bond, and began to climb. When I thought I was close enough, I began to swing myself back and forth again until I could hook my talons over the edge. It didn't occur to me to wonder whether or not the sigil would be able to hold me up. Somehow, I knew it would. And it did. I just hoped I wasn't hurting Gaav as I crossed over to the cord of light that joined him with Ruby-Eye. 

I breathed at it, squinting my eyes almost shut to keep from being blinded by red sparks. And for good measure, I tore into it with my teeth. 

During my second hatchlinghood, I'd gotten a look at the neighbour's dog after it had gotten a little too curious about a porcupine. The poor thing had had spines sticking out of its nose, mouth, and cheeks, and biting into that red cord made me feel as though I'd just picked up a similar set of piercings. But I kept at it, breathing at it and tearing it apart bit by bit, feeling individual strands snap one at a time. At the same time, I was also belching rancid-dead-god flavour. _Maybe I should try throwing up on it,_ I thought cynically. I might even have tried it if it hadn't been attached to Gaav. 

My mate's sigil was fading more quickly than I could break the cord. Frowning, I tried to push some of my energy out along the mate-bond, hoping that I wasn't going to scald him or something. I hated blundering around in the dark like this, not sure of what I was doing or whether it would help . . . or whether I was just too late. I shivered at the thought and bit down harder—if this had been the physical, I would have been tasting blood. 

It was . . . odd, that Ruby-Eye hadn't reacted to this. Could he not sense what I was doing? Or did he not care? 

One bit at a time, I worked the cord down to about half of its original diameter, allowing me to take the rest out with a single carefully placed shot. 

I breathed white fire. 

The universe shifted. 

Afterwards, I figured out what happened: the sudden loss of a major sigil on Ruby-Eye's side of the Planes Chart had unbalanced everything. At the time, all I knew was that I was unexpectedly flying through the air again as the thin lines of power holding Gaav's sigil to the other Dark Lords snapped and the light from his symbol began to fade like those of the dead and I was feeling so cold and oh Ceiphied, had I killed him? Horrified, I jerked, and found myself tumbling ass over teakettle again. 

My hand suddenly hit something solid, and I grabbed at it, only to find black and gold fire boiling up my arm. I roared with pain and tried to unclench my talons as the energy shot out along the mate-bond and there was a sudden flare of red from below me as Gaav's sigil came to life again. Power pouring through me and into him. 

I stopped trying to let go. Comprehension came slowly: I'd grabbed onto the Lord of Nightmares' sigil, and Her power was flowing through me, down the mate-bond, and into Gaav. Sustaining him, as Ruby-Eye had apparently been doing up to this point (or was the problem just that the bastard had left him drained?) 

Being used as a conductor for the energies hurt like blazes, though, and I couldn't stay here forever. Even if time was moving much more slowly here, Ruby-Eye was going to notice what was going on soon, and get really pissed off. I couldn't afford to leave my body vulnerable with him rampaging around. 

I craned my neck around and looked down. Part of the tether I'd chewed through was still dangling from Gaav's sigil, although it was looking rather faded and translucent. Good, because I had no idea how to create a new link here. I wrapped my hind legs and my tail around the mate-bond, and began to swing back and forth. Hopefully if I could get the broken tether in contact with the Golden One's sigil, they'd connect together of their own accord. If not, I'd just have to build up enough momentum to dump my mate's sigil on _top_ of the central one, and hope that didn't do anything harmful to him. 

I hated the way I was having to guess my way through this. Deep inside me, something was screaming in terror, but I squeezed my earflaps against the sides of my head and refused to listen. Everything would work out. It had to. _Just keep swinging._

The dangling sigil seemed to weigh both nothing and more than a dimos, both at the same time. But it was moving, a little, in short arcs. I tried to put my back into it, and the trailing tether lashed upwards and suddenly it was as though the weight had all melted away as black-gold power shot along the line directly and Gaav's sigil flared to burning red life. 

I sagged and lost my grip on the Lord of Nightmares' sigil as I relaxed. I didn't care if I fell now, though. There wasn't anything here to smash up against as I concentrated on moving myself back to the physical. At worst, I'd end up playing pendulum below Gaav's sigil again. 

I jerked to a stop long before I expected, and looked upward, blinking. Which was when I discovered that although I'd let go of the Golden One's sigil, it hadn't let go of me. There was a black-gold line stuck to me now, attached somewhere near the base of my right wing. 

For a moment, I just stared at it, mouth gaping. _What in hell am I supposed to do about that?_ Followed immediately by, _Worry about it later._ The Lord of Nightmares had never shown any interest in harming me or my mate and the link didn't seem to be damaging, so it was more important for now that I get out of here. 

I was looking for . . . cold and biting wind and red light reflecting off the ice and the sound of my mate's outraged roar as he tore free of Ruby-Eye (please, please let him be tearing free) and the sting of burns left behind by Taben-Shabranigdo. Grope my way back up through the layers, more quickly this time because I knew where I was going. The bond to my body was invisible, but it was also strong, and I popped out into the cold just in time to feel a chunk of ice smack me in the muzzle. 

"Hey, you! Don't just stand there—do something!" 

Luna Inverse, it seemed, could be just as violent as her sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends the chapter where Gaav didn't _quite_ tell a "your Mom" joke. ::facepalm::


	52. Gaav

_I'll make sure the two of us go together._ When Dear Old Dad started to suck my guts out, it was the mate-bond and the memory of that promise that kept me conscious and fighting even as my substance bled away. I couldn't break the mate-bond, Val wouldn't allow it, but I also couldn't let my dragon die this way, with his power pulled out by Ruby-Eye. Not while there was anything I could do to prevent it. 

And so I struggled, feeling stretched thinner by the moment, but not willing to give up. Until the bottom dropped out of everything. 

The link between Ruby-Eye and me tore, the Planes Chart thrashed violently, and I felt suddenly . . . I don't know. Not lighter, exactly. Looser, somehow, maybe. Like I'd been freed from a cage I'd scarcely been aware of. But I could also feel my strength bleeding away, even more so than before. 

Had I been freed just to die? Fucked if I was going to allow that! But I hadn't been able to do more than form the thought when a stream of energy spilled along the mate-bond. 

_Val, no!_ The only thing worse than dying here would be somehow killing him by sucking him dry of energy, but again, if I tried to break the mate-bond, he'd hang onto it, and me, with bloody talons. 

" **You . . .** " Lei Magnus was saying, but it sounded like he was underwater or something. Or maybe like time was all fucked up. 

I threw myself backwards at Dolphin. If Val and I had to die here, I was going to take at least one of them with me, and she was the most vulnerable, because she couldn't both dodge and hold on. 

As I slammed my tail into her face, a sudden blast of power erupted inside me. Something else had replaced Ruby-Eye at the other end of the dangling link, and I might not like it much when I found out what it was, but for now I didn't have the time to worry about it. I twisted around and breathed straight at Dolphin's eyes. She didn't let go, but she vented a high-pitched squealing scream as I temporarily blinded her on both the physical and the astral. She tightened her grip on me into a stranglehold and thrashed back and forth like she was panicking. I suspected the truth was more that she was letting herself panic. She didn't want to be in this position, and this was a safe out. Something Ruby-Eye couldn't really blame her for. 

Lei Magnus was reeling, possibly unbalanced by the rapid shifts in the Planes Chart. If I was lucky, he'd stay that way for a few seconds more. I tipped my entire body, throwing Zelas' weight to the side, and then immediately shrunk down to human form and leaped free of Dolphin's tentacles while Zelas hit the ground on the other side of our sister. Fortunately I'd spent some time learning how to scrunch myself down into a smaller shape on the astral, too, or I might never have gotten free. 

The moment I was clear, I lunged at Dear Old Dad. I needed to get that fucking staff away from him before he could do any more damage with it than he already had. 

Unfortunately, having my sword swinging down toward his unprotected back was enough to snap him out of whatever trance he was in. He shifted the Staff of Bone into its sword form even as he swung around to parry me. 

" **Useless, ungrateful brat,** " he snapped. 

"Why the fuck should I be grateful to you for treating me like a slave?" I feinted toward his left side, then quickly brought my blade around to the right . . . and almost pinked his wrist. My eyes narrowed. Come to think of it, Lei Magnus had primarily been a mage, and the Ruby-Eye of the Shinma War era had preferred to fight in his Mazoku form. He'd put everything he knew about swordsmanship into me, but I'd spent the past few millennia picking up new tricks and learning different styles as I came across them, and he hadn't. 

So I was . . . just maybe . . . the better swordsman. It was a piss-poor advantage under the circumstances, but it was the only one I had, so I decided to run with it. I went on a fast and furious offensive, driving him back one step, then another. I didn't want him to have time to think, or to give orders to Zelas or Dolphin. Without orders, I doubted my sisters would act. 

Attacking that way put me at a bit of a disadvantage too, because I knew there was another chunk of Dear Old Dad wandering around the battlefield and I couldn't spare the attention to look for it. I'd just have to hope that someone was keeping him occupied. 

Ruby-Eye left a tiny little opening, and this time I did pink his forearm. He fell back an extra step, staring at me incredulously, and I smirked. Despite the stakes riding on all of this, the fight was actually starting to be _fun_. I moved forward, ratcheting up the pressure, not giving him time to recover. His robe was making it difficult to see what he was doing with his feet, and I slashed at it, shredding it. I nicked his calf in the process. 

If I'd been fighting a mortal, I might even have had a chance to win the battle by attrition, one little cut after another. Too bad Lei Magnus wasn't even remotely human anymore. His cuts bled for only a few seconds before healing, and I was pretty sure I hadn't damaged him on the astral at all. Well, if I kept him busy enough, sooner or later one of us would make a mistake, and I was hoping it would be him. 

After a couple more minutes of thrust-cut-feint-parry, I noticed he was breathing hard. It might have been a hint of an advantage, of the reflexes of the real, human Lei Magnus taking over, but I wasn't about to bet on it. It smelled too much like a trap. 

_This is taking too long._ I was acutely aware of the spells whizzing past, Lina Inverse chain-casting the Dragon Slave while Val and Milgazia both chanted long dragon spells that burned against my astral senses as they were completed. But they couldn't keep distracting the other chunk of Dear Old Dad forever. I had to find some way to get rid of this one. 

Well, we'd been fighting more-or-less like humans for a while now. Time for me to change it up. Thing was, he'd be expecting me to charge in like a Mazoku, and that wasn't what I intended to do at all. 

I pulled my tail out of the astral, curling it loosely around one leg so that it stayed invisible under my coat. Ruby-Eye knew how to fight dragons, but I doubted he'd expect _me_ to fight like a dragon. Even though he was the reason I could in the first place. And really, was using a half-shifted form fighting like a dragon, or just like Val? 

I kept on pressing Lei Magnus backward, hoping that his foot would slip or something, but also waiting for my chance. I needed a low opening—there! 

I lashed out with my tail, grabbed him by the ankle, and threw him down on his ass. He immediately tried to change forms, but I fought him by clamping down on the astral, and . . . succeeded? Fuck, I actually _was_ stronger than him. That felt weird. Just a few minutes ago, I'd been fighting for my life, but without the coercive Mazoku parent-child bond, one piece of Ruby-Eye barely qualified as a threat. 

Just the thought of all the shit I'd been through because of Ruby-Eye and his fucking plan for the universe pissed me off . . . but I couldn't afford to get distracted by that now. Take him out first, fume later. 

On the physical, I drove my sword into his chest. On the astral, I gouged out his core with my talons, which was both the same motion and not. And he . . . shredded. On the astral, anyway. The physical body of Lei Magnus, long past its prime, became a pile of dust, while the mage's spirit faded, screaming in rage. 

Fuck, whatever. He'd lost his marbles and thrown in with Ruby-Eye, and I had no sympathy for him. I mean, okay, I knew the story: he'd flipped his lid after his girlfriend had died, and started wanting to break the world, and that had given Ruby-Eye an opening. Val might have understood him better. Or not. I mean, human love is nothing like having one end of a broken mate-bond in your head making your mind scream in agony. Lei Magnus had just been weak. 

Well, that was one down. Now we had to deal with the other one. 

It had been a while since I'd been able to take a proper look around. Xellos was tussling with Milgazia and Lina Inverse and the other humans, exchanging taunts and blows that didn't have even one percent of his real power behind them—playing, in other words. I saw him cringe away as Luna Inverse took a swipe at him with her kitchen knife, though. Zelas and Dolphin were watching, not interested in supporting Ruby-Eye without any orders to force them to do it, but also unwilling to move against him. And Val . . . 

I turned slowly. Val was shaking his head and giving Luna Inverse an injured look. I hadn't noticed that she hadn't been with her sister. 

"I _was_ doing something," Val snapped in response to something she had said or done while I was busy with Lei Magnus. "Don't blame me if your astral senses were too dull to see it." 

"You looked to me like you were staring into space—and I had to save your ungrateful neck while you were doing it!" 

That sent a sudden chill through me. If whatever blow she was talking about had landed—if I'd failed to save Val because I'd been too busy elsewhere . . . 

"What the hell are you talking about?" 

"I mean big and nasty over there fired off three shots at you while you were standing around like a waxwork!" Maybe Luna was more like her younger sister than I had thought, because that certainly sounded like something Lina might have said. "And they weren't easy to block, either! I don't know why I even bothered, after the way you ate my tail!" 

"Not your tail," Val corrected. "Ceiphied's tail. I didn't want to do it either—it tasted vile—but I needed more holy power and I couldn't think of any other way to get it." 

"So I'm a battery now?" 

" **Ceiphied's power,** " Ruby-Eye said. He'd been quiet until now. Curious, maybe. " **Did you think that would save you?** " 

Val shook his head. "Not me," he said. "My life isn't worth a bent copper on its own." He looked at me and smiled a dragon-smile. 

_So you were the one who broke me loose from that asshole, little dragon?_ I . . . could believe that. I could more than believe that. I mean, who else would have bothered? There weren't many other people who gave a shit about my survival. I'd have to ask him later how he'd done it and exactly what he'd used to replace Ruby-Eye in my connection to the Planes Chart. 

"The ties between mortals can be pretty fucking strong sometimes," I added, propping my sword against my shoulder. "Even you know that." 

" **Are you calling yourself a mortal now?** " I'd never seen Ruby-Eye look disgusted before. It was interesting, seeing how that was reflected by his various heads. 

"Half a one, maybe." Hopefully that would piss him off. Pissed off people did stupid things. Even when they were also Dark Lords. 

The time for words was over, and we both knew it. I abandoned my human form with a shrug, but even in my real shape, I was smaller than him. That was deceptive, though. A fat man can be big without necessarily being strong. 

I slammed straight into him with the full force of my body. It didn't bowl him over, but he did slide backwards a couple of feet. Val took advantage of Ruby-Eye's distraction to pounce on his back, teeth and talons glinting with astral energy as he tore in. 

Ruby-Eye howled with rage, thrashing and clawing and biting and casting spells and breathing magic in our faces . . . but the piece that had infested Taben was much weaker than the one that had been bonded with Lei Magnus, and there were two of us fighting it this time, instead of just one. And eating more of Ceiphied seemed to have done Val some good in an astral-density sense—he had almost as much weight and presence there as I remembered Ragradia having, but he still didn't feel like one of the Dragon Gods, thank the Golden One. 

I tore one of Ruby-Eye's heads off and spat it out onto the ground, where it thrashed for a moment before I found and bit through the thread of astral substance still connected to his main mass, and it stilled and crumbled. Not that it did much good when he had at least a dozen and could create more at will. Val was tearing chunks out of him with all four sets of talons, but that wasn't doing much good either. 

We needed to get at the bastard's core, but he was jiggling around on the astral and I couldn't pinpoint it. I needed to clamp him down and stop him from wriggling, the way I had with the chunk that had been in Lei Magnus, but he was fighting that with everything in him, jerking and oozing and moving through different layers of the astral. Which I couldn't do without concentrating on that plane to the point of closing out the physical, and that was risky when you had an actual body there and not just a projection. I didn't want to go through another shitty reincarnation cycle. Especially not when it meant Val would probably end up doing something stupid. 

There was an alternative, but it meant getting Val out of the line of fire. 

"Change of tactics," I said, to get my dragon's attention. I shoulder-slammed Ruby-Eye and took a couple of steps back. "Keep him off me," I told Val, and sat back on my haunches. 

It's pretty fucking rare that a Dark Lord, or a Dragon God for that matter, has a chance to fire off a blast at full power during a battle. It isn't something we can just do casually. You have to stop and concentrate—gather everything together so that you can push it out all at once. Still, it was less risky than completely removing my attention from the physical. 

I growled softly and began to gather a mass of energy in front of me. The last time I'd done this, it had been a half-assed version, an attempt to get rid of Lina Inverse and Xellos and a copy of the Claire Bible all in one shot. That time, I'd released the shot before it was fully-formed, rationalizing that half of my best should be enough to get rid of them . . . and a little worried that letting loose at full power would cause the pocket dimension to burst and leave me exposed. This time there was no point in trying to hide, though. Everyone already knew where I was. 

My energies normally formed up red, but this technique always produced a blue-white ball of pure astral power. This time, though, there were little crackling gold sparks dancing across the surface of the ball. Which was not normal, but I couldn't spare the attention to worry about it. Everything that I wasn't putting into gathering power had to go into keeping an eye on my surroundings. If Zelas or Dolphin decided to make a move—if Ruby-Eye remembered they were there and _ordered_ them to make a move . . . 

_Don't think about it._ I concentrated on pouring more energy into my attack. I wouldn't get a second chance at this. Ruby-Eye probably would have run away already if he hadn't been afraid of trashing his own side's morale. 

The ball was huge now, as tall as I was and blindingly bright. This was as good as it was going to get. 

"Val!" I called, and my little dragon read my mind and jumped clear of Ruby-Eye. Or he tried to, because Ruby-Eye shot out several appendages and a couple of them actually grabbed on. 

I gritted my teeth. If I let go of the ball of power to muster a different attack, it would dissipate and we'd be back where we started. I had to trust Val to get loose on his own. But trust didn't come easy to me. Not even trust of the crazy dragon who had given me everything he had. 

Val snarled and turned his breath weapon on Ruby-Eye . . . and there was an explosion of holy energy that I think startled all three of us. _He didn't get power like that just from eating a few more bits of Ceiphied!_ And, in some tiny corner of my mind, _Why doesn't it burn?_ Even if it wasn't aimed directly at me, it shouldn't have been comfortable to get near. I did feel a tingle, a sensation like the scales at the back of my neck were going to hackle, but that was nothing to what I would have felt if, say, Ragradia, had let loose a similar blast at the same distance. 

My dragon fell, sliding among the ice shards. He wasn't quite completely free, there was a tendril still wrapped around his tail, but he quickly scuttled as far out as it would allow, and nodded to me. Willing to sacrifice that tail-tip, if that was what it took. 

I released the energy ball. At that range, Ruby-Eye had no time to dodge. It slammed into him while he was still trying to haul Val back in to use him as a shield. He fought the force of it, howling in rage, but from the moment it touched him, he was already starting to come apart on the astral. 

I watched in silence as he tore into tiny pieces on both planes, thinking, not of my long and complicated relationship with the creature that had spawned me, but of a fool of a deaf mage who didn't have the common sense to come in out of the rain. In the very last instant, as the shadow of Shabranigdo disintegrated, I'd seen the tiny phantom that was a human soul uncurl from its fetal position. I knew I hadn't blown him up, anyway. Souls are a lot more resilient than mere astral bodies, as I have reason to know. 

Val was murmuring healing spells over his tail, which, as expected, had been caught in the periphery of the blast, leaving the last few feet of it skinned raw and bleeding. He noticed me looking at him and shot me a smile. Further away, the teasing battle between Xellos and the mortals had paused, with the slimy little cone now clinging to his mother's side. 

Zelas tilted her head, then shrank down to human form—the armed and armoured version, not the seductive one. Beside her, Dolphin wiggled and shrank down too. 

I stayed in my larger form. If they wanted to talk, the two of them could come to me. And spend a lot of time looking up. I didn't really give a fuck. Instead, I turned to Val, who was just about finished with his tail. 

"We need to talk," I said. 

"Yeah. Maybe you can help me figure what the hell is going on, because I sure can't." He nuzzled the jaw of my leftmost head. 

"Ugh," Lina Inverse said loudly from somewhere not too far away. "I can't believe that it's _over_. And I didn't even get to kill a single Dark Lord." 

"You've already killed two of them," Zelgadis pointed out. "That should be enough for one lifetime. Besides, I thought you wanted to be rich, not famous." 

The sorceress' tone suggested she was rolling her eyes. "Being famous _makes_ you rich, Zel. If you know how to work with it, that is." 

"Yeah, it's a good way to get people to buy you lunch," Gourry added. 

"Lina-san, don't tell me you're swindling people out of their money to buy you food." The princess planted her hands on her hips. 

"She'd _better_ not be," the Knight of Ceiphied added, cracking her knuckles. 

Someone sighed, over near my rightmost head. I whipped around to find . . . a ghost. Semi-transparent, hanging in the air, watching everything with a sort of melancholy smile. 

"All's well that ends well, I guess," Taben said quietly. 

"Does this qualify as 'well'?" Val asked. 

The ghost laughed, but it sounded forced. "It's better than some of what might have happened. Some of what Ruby-Eye showed me, it was . . ." 

"Probably the same shit he's been preaching for thousands of years," I said. "Have you got something to say to us, or are you just bored from being a spectator for so long?" 

The ghost blinked. "I wanted to thank you. For answering my prayer and killing me." 

"It was mostly by accident. I don't normally make any effort to deal with that prayer shit on purpose." But at least now I knew who had been praying to me, and for what. One of the few people who knew I was still around. Maybe that even meant it wouldn't happen again. 

"Still, you're the only one who listened. You came through for me. I think . . . even in my next life, I'll remember that." 

"Don't make worthless promises that you can't keep anyway," I growled. "Just go on and do whatever it is that normal human souls that aren't stuck to a Mazoku do after their bodies die." All I knew was that they hung around somewhere for a while before being reborn. Phibby had been able to call them back from that place, but even he had never been able to figure out where "somewhere" was, or what it was like. And although I'd passed through "somewhere" myself, I'd always been deeply unconscious while it was happening. 

"I intend to. It's just . . . no, that wouldn't work." 

"What?" 

"I was going to ask you to tell my sister I was sorry . . . but when I think about _how_ you would say it, that maybe isn't such a good idea." 

Val snickered. "How about I ask someone else to tell her? Sylphiel, maybe, or Princess Amelia. They should have some idea of how to handle the job." 

I nudged him in the neck. "Are you saying I don't know how to pass on a message, little dragon?" 

"No, just that the look you get when someone grabs your coat and starts to cry into it is priceless. I've seen it happen a few times when you were playing mortal military leader, remember?" 

I grunted. I remembered, all right. 

Above us, Taben's ghost was pretty obviously smothering a laugh. I scowled. 

"You've transmitted your last wish, so why aren't you getting the fuck out of here?" 

The ghost vanished with a pop, like a broken illusion spell, and I scowled again. With my luck, if the pint-sized bastard remembered anything into the next life, it would be Val's little prod at my ego. 

"So . . . I guess it's over," my dragon said. 

"All except the cleanup and the explanations," I said, nuzzling him again.


	53. Val

The cleanup and the explanations took a while. They always do. 

Zelas came over to talk to us on her own initiative, while Dolphin and Xellos hung back. Which was a shame, since it might have been nice to use Xellos as a punching bag to work off a bit of my stress right about then. Now that the immediate need for action was gone and I'd reassured myself that my mate wasn't hurt, it was really starting to sink in just how close to the edge we'd gotten. And I still didn't understand what had happened, and that bothered me even more. 

"So," Gaav rumbled, looking down at his sister. "Are you going to back off, or declare the start of Round Two?" 

"Back off," Zelas said, with a crooked smile. "Of course. Even if we wanted to continue the fight, we need to do some thinking about how to handle you two now. You've completely shifted the balance of power in a way I wouldn't have considered possible if I hadn't witnessed it. I need at least a few decades to study this. Not to mention that it's going to take at least that long before Dyn's back up to full strength. I'm not stupid enough to play into your strengths by openly attacking you while the balance of power is on your side. In fact, I'm a bit grateful that you're not all that interested in exterminating us." 

"Stay out of our way and we'll stay out of yours," my mate replied easily. Because he knew that if he started another fight here, there was no guarantee our side would win. We'd gotten away with as much as we had because most of Shabranigdo's allies here had been reluctant ones. Now we were tired, and they had potential backup they hadn't called on yet. 

Zelas was still smiling, but it seemed a shade more genuine now. "We'll see you in a hundred years or so, then. Look after your dragon—he seems to be good for you." She waved at us, a little finger-wiggle as she vanished. 

"Shame on you for not inviting us to the ceremony," Dolphin added, blowing us a kiss, before she disappeared too. The thought made me feel a bit hot under my scales despite the biting northern cold, since by their nature, dragon mating ceremonies are private. I mean, surely she hadn't been implying she would have liked to watch. Had she? 

"Please say hello to Filia-san for me," Xellos added to Lina and her friends, then popped off to wherever it was that Xellos popped off to when he wasn't busy. Well, better them than me. Filia would probably take a swing at whoever delivered the message. Hopefully they'd be smart enough to pick a moment when she was wiping a hatchling's nose or something. Which reminded me . . . 

"We've still got to clean up the mess at Dragon's Peak," I said. 

Gaav scowled. "If we're lucky, the stoning spell fell apart along with Ruby-Eye." 

And if it hadn't, he'd have to fix it, or show Milgazia how to fix it . . . or discard the allies that we'd acquired with considerable effort. 

Dragon's Peak was very quiet in the early morning light—hard to believe that it was only hours since we had left, since it felt like a lifetime. The fledgling black dragons who were flying back up from Seyruun City hadn't even arrived yet, or if they had, they were hiding somewhere. And the statues had sprinkles of snow on them, where the weather had snuck through the ruptured climatic barrier. 

Gaav landed on the wide ledge we'd come in on the first time. I dropped down beside him, and the others quickly followed. 

My mate turned toward the statue that was also the black dragon Willa, moving his heads in different directions so that he could inspect it from all angles. 

I concentrated on the astral, trying to get an idea of what he was perceiving. The stone didn't register in that realm, of course. The only things that exist in both worlds are spells and living creatures. Instead, there was a misshapen little lump of something black and crackling. Gaav prodded at it with a talon, and muttered a curse as energy shot out to bite him. 

I squinted. If I really concentrated hard, I could almost see something white through the encapsulation, but it was too tightly crammed in for me to be able to make out what it was. 

Gaav stroked a talon delicately across the surface of the darkness, ignoring its attempts to bite him. Then he repeated it, retracing the same line. Once, twice, three times . . . It took six of those gentle strokes before the blackness burst under pressure from the inside and let the white thing out. It darkened as it unfolded, becoming the astral body of a dragon. A small dragon, but then blacks _are_ small on the astral, just as goldens are small on the physical. Only ancient dragons are about the same size on both planes. 

I wondered suddenly if I got bigger, or just denser, on the astral side when I pushed most of my substance over there so that I could take human form. I hadn't ever really checked. 

I let my perceptions drop back to the physical as the stone ledge vibrated under my feet. Chunks of rock fell away as Willa shook herself free of a thin layer of stone. 

"Elder Milgazia?" She sounded confused, but at least she wasn't attacking us. 

"Are you all right, Willa?" the golden asked. 

"I think so. What happened? It was the middle of the night just a few seconds ago." 

"Mazoku happened," Milgazia replied. 

Willa looked around, apparently noticed Gaav for the first time, and jerked away from him, nearly falling off the ledge. 

"Not Maryuu-oh," Milgazia added. "He's on our side, for the time being. More or less. Now, we need to go and help others. Will you be all right here?" 

"I . . . yes, I suppose." Willa still didn't look happy. 

Gaav was looking at me. "Did you understand what I was doing, little dragon?" 

"I think so. You were cutting open the encapsulation one layer at a time, to keep from hurting her, right?" 

"Pretty much." He grimaced. "This is going to take for-fucking-ever even with two of us working on it, unfortunately." 

I'd been afraid he was going to say something like that. 

I spent the next several hours wandering around the aerie with a grumpy fledgling golden as my guide (since Milgazia had gone with Gaav, in order to lessen the number of misunderstandings that were likely to occur), carefully de-encapsulating the astral bodies of various dragon statues and trying not to hackle at every golden dragon that I rescued. While I knew that no one here had the least connection with the death of my people, I was ridiculously tired and losing control over my subconscious. When my vision started swimming and I could only keep my balance by staying on all fours, I knew I'd done too much, and I told my guide in no uncertain terms that she needed to find me somewhere to rest, _now_. 

They did have guest dens, fortunately. Nice ones, even. The young golden took me to one intended for blacks or dimos, since I was too big to fit comfortably in a space designed for goldens, and left me alone to curl up on the spell-warmed sand. I fell asleep without even bothering to turn off the lights. 

When I woke up, there was a larger body wrapped around mine, with red scales gleaming in the etheric light. Gaav's heads were resting on my shoulder, and his tail was looped over my flank. I grinned and licked the earhole of the nearest head, almost laughing as I watched him twitch without waking. He probably didn't even know that he did that. I could feel the texture of the dreams he'd always claimed he didn't have, if not the content, by concentrating on the mate bond. They felt . . . light. Good dreams, maybe. Not nightmares, I didn't think, even if we were both directly attached to their Lord now. 

I still wasn't sure exactly what that meant, though. What were we now? How much had what had happened inside that space changed the two of us? And . . . was he going to be angry when I explained what I'd done? After all, I hadn't exactly had his permission, and I'd come close to killing him. Or I thought I had. 

"You're thinking too hard again." Blue eyes blinked sleepily at me. His other two heads were still lying on my shoulder, eyes closed. 

"I did say I had an explanation to give you. Or . . . something. About what happened." Not very coherent, but it was the best I could do. 

His other four eyes flickered open, although he didn't bother to move his heads. "So let's hear it." 

Fumbling, I tried to tell him what I'd done in the depths of the astral, in the space with the Planes Chart and its fractal mass of dangling sigils. He listened patiently, although his brow ridges slowly wrinkled in a frown. 

" . . . and so I'm still not quite sure that I did the right thing," I finished. 

"You did, little dragon. Or at least, you didn't do the _wrong_ thing, and you saved both our asses by doing it." 

"But what exactly did I do?" 

Gaav snorted. "Exactly what it looked like you did: broke the bond between me and Ruby-Eye, and connected the two of us directly to the Lord of Nightmares." 

"But I'm . . . not a Dark Lord. Or a god. How could I possibly have . . . ?" 

"They wanted you to be one, remember? My bet is that Valwin and the rest fucked up. They cut you off from using what's left of Ceiphied as a power source—except by eating him—but they couldn't stop you from latching onto something else as a replacement, or bar you from that place. Which I have to admit I didn't know actually existed as a _location_ , even on the astral. I wonder if the others have any idea, or they're just as fucking clueless as I was." 

"Valwin must have known, or he wouldn't have been able to talk to me there." 

My mate tilted the head he'd been using to do most of his talking. "I'm not sure what you saw that time was . . . actual. Might have been an illusion. Anyway, we can spend the next couple of years working on figuring it out. We should be in for a bit of peace for the next little while." 

"Sounds boring," I said, and he laughed. 

"We can always make our own fun, little dragon." He began to nibble along my jaw, while another head sneakily licked the scales at the base of my neck. I stroked my tail along the trailing edge of his wing. "Just a sec while I seal the entrance." That took a flicker of his tail that barely counted as a motion, and created an opaque barrier of red mist just inside the curtain of light that already barred off the den. 

I twisted my head around a bit so that I could return his affection properly, licking at the parts of his head where the scales were thin and translucent. He seemed to be particularly sensitive around the earholes, with more shudders running through him every time I turned my attention to them. I almost laughed, and made a mental note to experiment with nibbling on his ears the next time we did something like this in human form. 

Suddenly, he grunted and rose to his feet, stepping over me before he lay down again, arranged on his side with his belly facing mine . . . well, pressed against mine, really, with our sheaths rubbing together, and I groaned as my cock slid out into the slick mess, exposing me to more friction. Soft belly-scales and the shallow wrinkles of loose skin around his sheath and his own gradually emerging cock against the head of mine . . . I began working my lower body, thrusting against him. 

His tail looped around between us, adding harsher scales to the sensation for a moment as he slicked the tip down. Then it moved back, tracing a path against those soft, sensitive scales until it found the entrance to my cloaca and slipped inside. I vented a cry and pushed back. _Fuck_ , that was good. The feeling of fullness, the slight roughness against my insides . . . and it was my mate's turn to groan as I thrashed against him, both our cocks trapped between our bellies . . . 

" _More!_ " I managed. It came out sharp and demanding despite not being very coherent. " _Haah!_ " I added as Gaav pushed several feet more of his tail into me. But it still wasn't quite enough, somehow, and I whined. 

My mate leaned in with one of his heads, snaking around so that his jaws could close gently over the nape of my neck. That was it—the sensation of being dominated by the only being anywhere I would trust to do such a thing to me. I bugled and came messily all over both of us. 

Gaav was still rutting against me as I tried to catch my breath afterwards, and I brought my tail around, sliding it between us and using it to tease at his sheath, and he made a low rumbling sound, between a growl and a moan. I wrapped my tail loosely around his cock and began fucking his sheath with the tip, and the talons gripping the base of my left wing tightened hard enough to slice into the scales and draw blood. The jaws on the nape of my neck tightened too, but never enough to break the skin, and I hated to think just how much restraint that was taking. Even more when he snarled with his other two heads and thrust his hips and came. 

Afterwards we lay there for several moments, nuzzling each other gently, until I sighed. 

"We've still got a few hundred statues to fix, and I should talk to Filia," I said reluctantly. After all, I might not see her again for a while. And my previous attempts to give her some closure hadn't gone off all that well. 

"You worry too much about her," Gaav said. 

I shrugged. "She's family, and she's fragile. More so than anyone notices, I think. I also need to give Jillas and Gravos some final orders, since I assume we're not taking them with us." 

"We can if you really want to, little dragon." 

"Now you're just humouring me. They wouldn't be happy living at the aerie, and if we decide to leave there for whatever reason, protecting a couple of mortals is going to be difficult. They'll be safer with Filia." And she would be safer with them. 

"Mmm. Don't take too long." 

"Not one second longer than I have to." I stretched out my power, using it to clean myself, then rose to my feet and shook myself a little to let the sand sift off my scales. I nosed my mate and run my tongue quickly along the jaw of his central head, then left the den.


	54. Filia

"Your Mama will be back soon," I said patiently as I wiped the runny muzzle of a golden hatchling so small a human could have picked her up. "It's just that there are only two people who can break the stone spell. They're working as fast as they can, but it takes time." 

That just got me a fresh burst of tears. I forced myself not to sigh as I wiped the tiny hatchling's muzzle again. Meanwhile, Jillas was giving me helpless looks. He wasn't good with children—with hatchling Val he'd somehow managed, but he had no idea what to do for all these young strangers. I couldn't blame him, because I really wasn't sure either. Gravos would probably have been just as dismayed if he hadn't found something useful to do, hauling armloads of dragon-sized tissues out of storage for me. 

"Marisha?" said a voice from behind me. "Come here, Ree-Ree." 

Instantly, the hatchling was all smiles, squealing "Mama!" and running toward the female who had just stuck her head through the entrance to the nursery. She swept up her daughter the moment she'd cleared the entryway, and hugged her close. 

That put me close to sniffling myself. Val had never once done that with me, as far as I could recall. He'd been a bit standoffish even when he'd been that little. 

I was still trying to understand the many ways in which my relationship to Val had been . . . not normal, for a mother and her son. Or maybe misunderstanding your child so badly was normal, after all. I'd seen it more than once among the human families in Sandy Point. It was just that I thought I'd be able to do better. That had been so arrogant of me. 

"You look pretty depressed, Filia-san." 

I hadn't even noticed Val enter the hatchery, probably because he was in hybrid rather than full dragon form, with wings and a tail attached to a human body. 

"I just feel like such a fool," I said, and he shrugged. 

"Happens to the best of us sometimes. Listen, we're going to be leaving soon, but I figured I'd check in with you first." 

"Leaving?" I could feel the tears welling up. I'd been trying so hard to work towards understanding him, and now he was . . . 

"Hey, there—you're going to make me wish I'd just vanished without saying anything. You're making me feel like it's wrong for me to be happy." 

"I . . . It's just . . . Am I allowed to miss you, at least?" 

His expression softened. "Of course you are. But I wouldn't have stayed with you forever even if I had completely lost my memory and Gaav had been permanently dead. I told you before: I'm a fighter by nature, not a craftsman or a shop clerk. I would have become an adventurer, or maybe a soldier. And anyway, my leaving doesn't mean that we'll never see each other again. After all, I know where you live." He grinned. 

"Y-you're leaving us behind too, Val-sama?" Jillas' good eye was shiny with tears. 

"I need you to look after Filia," Val said, his face serious. If he was laughing inside now, I couldn't see it. I _hoped_ he was laughing inside, because asking Jillas to look after anyone was a recipe for disaster. "Also, I'd like you to keep working on the kedthalam bombs. We didn't need them this time, but they might be a useful addition to our arsenal if something else goes wrong." 

"D'you think it's gonna?" 

"Not for a while, I hope. But sooner or later, something always does happen. After the first couple of hundred years, you start to see the pattern." 

Jillas wiped his eye with the back of one hand, and said, "Y'know, I think I'm glad I'm not gonna live to be a couple of hundred years old." 

Val grinned. "I'm not sure the world would survive it if you did. You'd blow it up by accident. Stay safe, Jillas." He ruffled the fox's ears with his tail. It wasn't something I could have done, but maybe an ancient dragon's tail is more dexterous than a golden's. "Filia . . ." 

"Will you do something for me?" I asked. "Before you leave?" 

"Sure. Well, within reason. What do you want me to do?" 

"Give me a hug?" It came out sounding much younger and more plaintive than I'd intended. 

"I can do that. You might want to shrink down first, though." 

I sniffled and nodded. Then I turned around (not that Val had any interest in my body, or Jillas or Gravos or the hatchlings either, but, well, old habits . . .) and concentrated on changing shape. I hadn't been human-sized at all since we'd arrived at Dragon's Peak, and it felt a bit odd to be so small in a dragon-sized room. 

Then I turned around and saw Val waiting for me. I forced a tremulous smile and walked forward to meet him. His arms wrapped around me, and after a moment, his wings did too. I found myself crying on his shoulder, just because. He smelled of leather and metal and dragon, and he stroked my back patiently until my crying had degenerated back into sniffles. 

"I'll see you in a couple of years, okay?" he said, unwrapping his wings. "Oh, yeah, and you might as well clean out my room back at the shop. Sell the stuff that's in there now and get a bigger bed—my old one would never fit two people, especially when one of them's Gaav's size." 

It was a promise to visit, so I said I would. 

Only after he'd said good-bye again and left the nursery did I stop to wonder if having the Chaos Dragon visit my little shop in Sandy Point was really such a good idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so that's it for now, folks. This may or may not end up with a sequel (I've got about 70 pages of it, but whether it's ever going to get finished is anyone's guess).
> 
> Other than that, I have one complete, short, rather peculiar Gaav/Val thing that I need to proofread for continuity. I'll probably post that next week-ish. I may also repost some of my old stuff from other fandoms over the holidays (probably the Trigun shorts, possibly some of the Yami no Matsuei stuff) while I work on turning the pile of expensive computer parts on my other desk into an actual computer.


End file.
